TURKEY: BEYOND THE FAULT-LINE
November 2001 – 22’00’’
| Muslim woman dressing | Music | 00:00 |
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| Byrne: When a Muslim woman chooses to put on the scarf, it is an act of faith. | 00:12 |
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| Fatima: I do this because god wants it. And he created me and I want to obey his rules. | 00:21 |
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| Byrne: But in Turkey, once the fabric is tied, pinned and adjusted, the headscarf becomes a symbol of something dangerous. The individual face framed by the scarf transformed into the face of Islamic fundamentalism. | 00:31 |
| Evran | Evran: In Turkey there are forces that would like to abolish the secular regime. there are dark religious forces that want to turn Turkey into an Iran. | 00:47 |
| Streets of Istanbul | Music |
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| Byrne: Women who wear the scarf are banned from universities and jobs in the public service, like teaching and nursing. They can’t take a sewing course or learn how to drive a car. | 01:09 |
| Fatima | Fatima: The government says you are trying to collapse our country. Can a scarf collapse a country, is our country such a teeny country. I don’t believe it. | 01:23 |
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| Turkish Mosques | Byrne: Turkey is adjusting to an awkward reality -- the sharpening of lines between the West and Islam. Religious rights are being curtailed, and ordinary people who want simply to practice their faith, are regarded as the enemy within. | 01:41 |
| Altay | Altay: I do not know if I am one of the fundamentalists. If praying, fasting and fulfilling the conditions of Islam is fundamentalism, then I do those things. I am living my religion but I cannot breathe in this country. | 02:00 |
| Istanbul harbour | Byrne: The past shimmers into the present in Turkey. Islam and Christianity -- two great religious tides -- met here , at the legendary Golden Horn, 1200 years ago. The Roman Empire fading, replaced by an empire of soaring minarets. | 02:26 |
| Turkish countryside | Today, Turkey is an Islamic nation facing west and as the world takes sides and signs up for war, Turkey’s careful model of secular Islam, separating religion and the state, is coming under intense pressure. | 02:46 |
| Edhem Super: Professor Edhem Eldam Historian | Edhem: The problem in Turkey is that the concept of national unity today is still perceived more or less in the same way that it was in, say, Europe in the 1920s or 30s,. That is, as something that has to be solid and cannot tolerate, cannot accept any deviance, any difference, of some importance. | 03:02 |
| Altay & Son | Altay: You’re not taking that light blue pair of trousers are you? Son: No. | 03:29 |
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| Byrne: Naciye Altay fusses over her eldest son in the way of all mothers readying a child to leave home. Muhacit is leaving for university. There’s elation, but also disappointment. | 03:35 |
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| Altay: There are your student papers. Son: I’ve put them in the bottom of the suitcase. | 03:47 |
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| Byrne: 19-year old Mujahit dreams of becoming a doctor. He got high grades qualifying him to become a doctor. But he’s been disqualified because his school curriculum -- identical in every other way – included the study of religion. And to discourage religious schools, the government scales down their students’ exam results by an average 10 percent. This bright young student will study engineering instead. | 03:53 |
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| For a proud parent, the injustice burns. |
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| Altay | Altay: I feel great pain. I have raised my children well. I have worked for 30 years and paid taxes to the state and my children have been successful. Despite that, because they’ve learned the Koran and tried to live according to their beliefs, they’ve been marginalised, disqualified and isolated. | 04:31 |
| Street parade | Music |
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| Byrne: Under Turkey’s secular model, the army is granted great power – charged with defending both the nation’s security, and its secular system -- religion seen as threatening as an invading army. The most recent clampdown on Islam, four years ago, saw the removal of Turkey’s first Islamic Prime Minister. The February 28th process, as it’s become known, was engineered by General Cevik Bir. | 05:08 |
| Bir | Bir: There was an intention that they were going to replace the Turkish republic regime with a kind of Islamic regime, something like this. It was clear. | 05:37 |
| Mosques | Music |
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| Fatima | Byrne: The implications of the Islamic purge have been radical for Turkish citizens like Fatima Nur. | 05:55 |
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| A secondary school teacher for a dozen years, she taught her students wearing her headscarf. Her career ended abruptly one morning after being summoned to the principal’s office. |
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| Fatima: A student called me, he said the head of the school was calling me. I went there and he said he was sorry but it’s the end of my teaching. | 06:12 |
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| Byrne: Scarves are now forbidden even at religious schools. Without work and an income, Fatima’s been forced to return to live with her parents in their village -- shopping in Istanbul a rare treat. | 06:33 |
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| It’s a bitter blow to a woman for whom teaching is a vocation. |
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| Byrne & Fatima | Byrne: The simple thing, Fatima, would be to just take off your scarf. Fatima: First of all, I want to obey the rules of my religion, but I want to live a modern life too. It’s my right I think. | 06:55 |
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| Byrne: Do you think the state is actually scared of Muslims? Fatima: In Turkey there are some people who are afraid of Muslims. I don't know why. They think that the Muslim people are fundamentalists, but in my opinion in Turkey if there are, there are few fundamentalists, but I haven’t met any yet all over my life, that’s it. | 07:11 |
| Mehmet | Mehmet: Muslims are seen as backward people. They’re seen as if they’re reactionary. They stamp them, label them, as fundamentalists. But what does this mean? | 07:56 |
| Komurcu’s family | Byrne: Mehmet Komurcu’s family has also been caught in the clampdown -- his scarf-wearing sisters forced to suspend their university studies. | 08:16 |
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| It’s a paradox, but Turkey’s determination to suppress Islam is pushing young women back into the home – something associated more with radical Islam than the West. | 08:28 |
| Streets of Istanbul | Music | 08:42 |
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| Byrne: The Komurcu family is typical of Istanbul’s booming population, swollen in the past decade by the arrival of tens of thousands of families from the south and east. | 08:52 |
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| Crafts learned at the knee of village masters continue in the crowded communities and labyrinth of streets. | 09:08 |
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| The values of these rural immigrants are conservative, their religious traditions strongly held. | 09:17 |
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| The authorities harsh insistence on secularism can feel, here, like a betrayal – a yielding to the West. | 09:24 |
| Mehmet | Mehmet: Let’s be like the west in industry, in production, in economy, but otherwise becoming like the west –everyone has a personality. I mean, there are Turkish traditions and customs. Let’s keep our traditions. These are values of ours. | 09:33 |
| Inside Mosque |
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| Byrne: Religion does have a place in Turkey – and it is confined to the mosques. | 10:02 |
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| This is Islam as decoration -- part tourist attraction, part architectural wonder, but a religion swept into the corners of public life. Those who challenge this policy – even those who simply wish to debate it – can expect to feel the full weight of the state. |
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| Fehmi Koru | This man, for instance, writer and columnist Fehmi Koru, is charged with breaching Turkey’s freedom of expression laws and faces a six-year jail term. | 10:25 |
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| Fehmi: I have a wife and five children. | 10:35 |
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| Byrne: Fehmi will be tried by a military judge before a state security court, alongside drug smugglers and perceived enemies of the state. | 10:40 |
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| Even a former judge of this court, Umit Kardas, believes a fair trial is unlikely. | 10:49 |
| Kardas | Kardas: Justice suffers absolutely because he loses his rights of defence, most of his rights are not recognised. That’s why these courts should be abolished. | 10:55 |
| Still photos: Earthquake aftermath | Music | 11:14 |
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| Byrne: Fehmi’s crime sprang from the earthquake in 1998 which claimed up to 100,000 lives. |
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| An Islamic newspaper editor interpreted the devastation as a response by god to the 1997 coup, retribution for those opposed to Islamic values. It was a view the authorities did not wished aired. |
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| Fehmi | Fehmi: I was only defending his right to say this, because everybody is entitled to his or her own ideas and whether you believe in god or not, whether you are an atheist or not you can say what you think very openly. | 11:38 |
| Wide shot - Istanbul | Music | 11:57 |
| Boat harbour | Byrne: There are many reasons for Turkey’s extreme sensitivity to any hint of religious extremism, but the simplest is -- geography. While its western border is the tranquil Aegean – to the south and east are the fundamentalist forces of the Middle East. |
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| Evran | Byrne: Do you regard Muslim fundamentalism as the greatest threat to Turkey today? | 12:31 |
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| Evran: I saw it as a threat when I was president and I still see it as a threat. Because Turkey is surrounded Iran, Iraq, Syria – fundamentalist countries. And they want to make us like them. |
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| Byrne: Former president and four-star general Kenan Evran ruled Turkey for eight years in the 1980s. Now 85, he remains a sharp observer, and a dedicated secularist. | 13:03 |
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| Evran: A fight against fundamentalists should be tough because the system they want to impose is tough. | 13:16 |
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| Byrne: Do you believe Turkey needs to be tougher than ever with its Muslims, its fundamentalists? | 13:28 |
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| Evran : Is Turkey in such danger? Not now, but if we become soft a time will come when you have an Osama bin Laden in our country. | 13:33 |
| Streets of Istanbul | Byrne: The curious thing about the way Turkey treats its Muslims is that this is not some insidious outside force, it is the country’s official religion. When Turks are born that’s what’s written automatically on their identity documents: religion, Islam. Which is why it’s a 99 percent Muslim country. But how far do you go? The question that’s always hovering here, and making for a lot of anxiety and confusion is, how Islamic is too Islamic. | 13:53 |
| Calligrapher’s pen | Like the deliberate markings of the master calligrapher’s pen, to be a good Muslim in Turkey requires a fine sense of proportion. | 14:25 |
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| A slip one way or another and the balance is disrupted, the harmony ruptured, a line almost invisible to the untrained eye has been crossed. |
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| Edhem Eldam | From Bosphorous University, historian Professor Edhem Eldam analyses the shifts. | 14:50 |
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| Byrne: How does a normal, everyday working Turk know when they're on the right or the wrong side of the religious the line? Edhem: Well through practice, and this practice is dictated more or less by the laws or the actions of the state. So it's not really internalised, or if it is internalised, it is through education, through socialisation, into the Turkish state. But it is a line that is more or less defined by the state and not by individuals. |
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| And that line may change in time when sometimes certain aspects of Islamic behaviour may be accepted, tolerated as being okay, if you want, and sometimes you may have a tighter line when, you know, things are not okay. |
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| Turkish market |
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| Byrne: Many in Turkey argue the time has come to loosen the line. Partly because Islam is no threat to the stability of the state, partly because Turks – especially Turkish farmers – are desperate to join that exclusive western club, the European Union. | 15:44 |
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| To qualify, Turkey must first abandon its repressive ways and its reliance on the military. It must outgrow what Deputy Prime Minister Mesut Yilnaz calls Turkey’s “national security syndrome.” | 16:03 |
| Yilnaz Super: Mesut Yilnaz Deputy Prime Minister, Turkey | Yilnaz: I think that’s over. Even the fundamentalists have seen they will never have a future in Turkey. I think the threat is over. Byrne: Can the military’s mind be changed on this matter? | 16:19 |
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| Yilnaz: If the threat of terrorism and fundamentalism are over, the mind of the military has to change. Byrne: you're sure? | 16:37 |
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| Yilnaz: I’m sure. If everything is changed, military cannot remain unchanged. | 16:48 |
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| Byrne: Yet the west’s war on terrorism gives renewed strength to the military’s arm, whatever the government wants. |
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| Bir
Super: General Cevik Bir | Bir: Democracy needs discipline. After that 11 September operation, I believe that most of the countries have already changed their way of looking to that. | 17:04 |
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| Byrne: So rather than the world lecturing Turkey on human rights – you’re saying the world will adopt your priorities? | 17:14 |
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| Bir: Right now, the security of the people and the society is more important than human rights, don’t you think so? | 17:19 |
| Fehmi Koru Leaving court | Byrne: The timing of the international war on terrorism couldn’t have been worse for Fehmi Koru. His hearing has not gone well, the case adjourned a month, with the prosecutor pressing for the maximum penalty. | 17:32 |
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| He and his supporters sense the hardening of attitude is due to the global climate change towards Islam. | 17:53 |
| Fehmi | Fehmi: This means that the world has become an arena for a global February 28th process, meaning that the rights of individuals have been, can be sacrificed on the altar of this security of the state. If you put security in front of everything, in front of the rights and the freedoms of the individual, this is, this can lead the world into an unknown future, actually. And this is my fear. | 18:00 |
| Altay | Byrne: And the frustration of even the most moderate Muslims is growing. | 18:44 |
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| Altay: I am against a system that oppresses me and narrows the space I live in. just like someone drowning at sea hangs onto a snake, to save myself I would fight in any way necessary. |
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| Byrne: And you, would you fight for your faith? |
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| Altay: Certainly. Of course I would fight for my faith. | 19:06 |
| Opening of parliament | Byrne: Turkey’s political and military elite mingle comfortably at the opening of parliament. Islamic politicians may attend, though their parties are shunned as coalition partners, and regularly banned. | 19:15 |
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| Ironically, the most popular politician in the land is Islamist Tayyip Erdogan, who some years ago was recorded said this: | 19:29 |
| Archival: Erdogan giving speech | Erdogan: You can’t be secular and Muslim at the same time. You’ve got to be one or the other. Once they’re brought together they resist each other like the positive and negative of a battery. | 19:41 |
| Erdogan | I am coming to solve the problems of the country. To overcome our troubles we don’t need to walk, we need to jump. |
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| Byrne: Erdogan has recanted now and professes loyalty to the secular state, but he's suspected to be foxing, practising takiye. | 20:17 |
| Edhem | Edhem: And takiye is a technical Islamic term that describes the right that is given to the Muslim to hide his real feelings when threatened, when in danger, | 20:28 |
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| and the assumption is therefore that these guys, the Islamic parties, are in fact waiting for the right time to topple the democratic system, impose a shariat, Koranic law based system, and create a purely theocratic Taliban like, or whatever, regime in Turkey. And the assumption then is that they're masking their intentions under the guise of democracy and whatever and that the moment they have power they will topple the regime. | 20:38 |
| Muslims in prayer | Byrne: Every Friday, in every Muslim country, the faithful gather to pray. But even here, the Turkish government takes a strong hand. | 21:19 |
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| The Imam’s weekly sermon is written by the government-appointed spiritual leader -- he’s allowed to talk up the besieged Turkish lire, but subjects like politics – and the war – are out of bounds. | 21:29 |
| Altay | Altay: The religion is imprisoned in the mosque. The Imam, the preacher, is the warden or jailer. The believers are prisoners. This is how the government wants it. | 21:45 |
| Muslims in prayer | Byrne: Be passive, be faithful and be quiet. Music | 22:06 |
| Boat harbour | Byrne: It’s a delicate balance, and it costs them many liberties, but the Turkish government has managed to keep its Muslims moderate and the forces of fundamentalism at bay. Now, like the good western ally it is, Turkey has volunteered to join America’s war on terror. | 22:19 |
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| For those living on the religious fault line, the rumblings are faint, but they are no longer so distant. | 22:37 |
| Credits: | TURKEY Reporter: Jennifer Byrne Cam: Ron Ekkel Sound: Kate Graham Editor: Garth Thomas Prod: Bronwen Reid | 22:48 |