ORHAN KEMAL CENGİZ
This week is the 34th anniversary of the Maraş massacreMaraş massacre , in which in 1978 hundreds of Alevis were brutally and barbarically killed in Maraş.
First a “harmless” bomb was thrown into a cinema full of members of the ultra-nationalist “bozkurtlar” (grey wolves). No one was wounded or killed, but the provocation achieved its goals. Tension began to rise in the city. A few days later, two Alevis teachers were killed. At the same time, a sermon in one of the city’s mosques took the lead in a rumor that began to circulate that Alevis were going to “attack and destroy the mosques.” There was no such Alevi attack, of course, but this rumor was enough to ignite a major attack against Alevis who had gathered for the funeral of the teachers. This was the beginning of the massacre; later on, angry mobs lead by grey wolves scattered into the city, killing and raping hundreds of Alevis. The Maraş massacre was one of the milestones leading to the Sept. 12, 1980 military coup.
Later on it became clear that the cinema bomb was thrown by a grey wolf. Alevis’ houses were marked weeks earlier by people pretending to be officials of the municipality. When the attacks started many people took to the streets with weapons and cutters. During the massacre, police and gendarme disappeared from the streets of Maraş. It was evidently clear that the massacre was planned and or orchestrated by the deep state, like has happened so many times in Turkey. However, there is another reality at hand: that the perpetrators of the massacre used mobs of people who were willing to carry out these barbaric acts. People’s religious and nationalistic sentiments were abused and manipulated. Mobs mainly were provoked with the circulation of the same message: Alevis were going to attack the mosques.
Therefore, a confrontation with the massacre requires two distinctive elements. One is to look at the state mentality which time after time uses provocation as a tool for manipulation. Alevis, unfortunately, cannot easily face this aspect of the massacre. They do not want to understand how the deep-state, military guardianship operated in Turkey. On the other hand, conservative elements of the Turkish society do not want to look into how religious sensitivities were used for this kind of manipulation, or how easily people have been manipulated in the past in the name of religion. Therefore there are so many different elements which make a true confrontation with the past so difficult.
If we were a healthy society, our prime minister and ministers would have joined the Alevis who were to gather in Maraş for the commemoration of the massacre. Not only them, but all segments of our society would pour into the streets of Maraş to condemn the heinous crimes committed in this city 34 years ago. But instead, we witnessed an extremely arbitrary ban of commemoration by the government on the commemoration of the event. If you ask them, of course, they would say there were concerns for “security,” there was possibility of mass “provocation” and so on, as if the prevention of these kinds of acts is not the duty of the government. I am sure they will mention peace, as if the prohibition of commemoration is not the number one killer of peace in society.
Can you challenge or tackle the deep state if you refuse to recognize its victims? Can you open a new page if you refuse look at the old ones? Again and again we arrive at the same point: Turkey cannot take serious steps forward as long as the country refuses to look into her past and the atrocities committed therein.[1]