Interview with Mamoste Part 2

Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth

            Here is the long delayed second part to the interview with my father-in-law, Kemal Seven (Mamoste) from the Özgür Gündem newspaper—translated into English.

I started this right after my journey to the South and I couldn’t help but notice the connections between the South and the Kurds—first and foremost the 20,000 strong Kurdish community we visited in Nashville (more on that later), but also the Civil Rights movement where an entire race of people threw off the chains of a century of oppressive politics.

 I mailed a postcard to Mamoste that I picked up while I was at the Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham, Alabama. On the front was a picture of Reverend Shuttlesworth, the preacher of the 16^th Street Baptist Church. He was instrumental in the legendary Freedom Rides—the bus trips across country by mixed white and black opponents of segregation.  The busses were attacked in Anniston (another Alabama town) and Birmingham, the activists beaten nearly to death. (The institute shows a rather nauseating film of the battered and pulpy face of one young white activist after the Anniston beatings)  Many bus companies refused to let them ride out of fear. Shuttlesworth’s moral support was instrumental in their continuation and success.

Protesters were met with tear gas and tanks—like the protesters of  Diyarbakır. In the museum I saw a police tank like the ones that patrol the streets of Southeast Turkey. Apparently they were used profusely by Birmingham’s mayor. The infamous Children’s March—when unarmed child protesters were attacked with German shepherds and fire hoses galvanized the whole nation.

And then the terrorism.

Whites bombed Shuttlesworth’s home and his church for daring to speak out against segregation. The church bombing killed four little girls. Show trials and kangaroo courts ensued—the last of the terrorist bombers was only tried in 2001.  Looking at Turkey’s kangaroo courts today, the struggle on the streets, the violence, one cannot help but be reminded a little at least of the South, of the United States at that time.

Ah, and just what are those kangaroo courts up to these days?

Journalist Ece Temelkuran wrote rather eloquently in a recent article in Al Akhbar English about the Silivri Prison in Istanbul working hard to add new cells. Clearly they are looking forward to more guests. Our aunt is visiting from Şırnak at the moment and says new prisons are under construction there as well. As the CHP’s Kılıçdaroğlu says, the country is becoming an open air prison.

Temelkuran also writes about Turkey’s journalists being driven out of work when they dare to criticize the government. She herself was fired from Haber Türk. Most recently Nuray Mert was let go by the Milliyet newspaper, who couldn’t take the government pressure any longer (Mert was widely known for drawing attention to the state’s increasingly autocratic bent).

I found it curious that Mamoste referred to the ‘Sultanate’ in his interview. It seemed a throwback in an age when you have a wide variety of dictatorial examples to draw from (everyone in America causes everyone else ‘Hitler’ for example) But I think the term is more than mere name-calling—he’s bringing attention to something the Republic denies, a continuity with the dictatorial, old world Sultans who came before, a connection which Kemalists claim was forever obliterated by their hero. But how could there NOT be a continuity? You cannot sever centuries of history from your country’s soul.

Before I get to the second part of Mamoste’s interview, take a gander at what Mark Twain had to write on his visit to Istanbul in Innocents Abroad during his travels after the Civil War in the final connection I will draw between mamoste and the South. This was published over one hundred and forty years ago—when Sultan Abdul Aziz the First was in power, a relatively progressive time with the Tazminat Reforms struggling to modernize the creaking Empire. Tell me what’s different. Tell me that Mamoste’s reference to the Sultanate is not still germaine today.

‘There is one paper published here in the English language--The Levant Herald--and there are generally a number of Greek and a few French papers rising and falling, struggling up and falling again. Newspapers are not popular with the Sultan's Government. They do not understand journalism. The proverb says, "The unknown is always great." To the court, the newspaper is a mysterious and rascally institution. They know what a pestilence is, because they have one occasionally that thins the people out at the rate of two thousand a day, and they regard a newspaper as a mild form of pestilence. When it goes astray, they suppress it--pounce upon it without warning, and throttle it. When it don't go astray for a long time, they get suspicious and throttle it anyhow, because they think it is hatching deviltry. Imagine the Grand Vizier in solemn council with the magnates of the realm, spelling his way through the hated newspaper, and finally delivering his profound decision: "This thing means mischief --it is too darkly, too suspiciously inoffensive--suppress it! Warn the publisher that we can not have this sort of thing: put the editor in prison!"

The newspaper business has its inconveniences in Constantinople. Two Greek papers and one French one were suppressed here within a few days of each other. No victories of the Cretans are allowed to be printed. From time to time the Grand Vizier sends a notice to the various editors that the Cretan insurrection is entirely suppressed, and although that editor knows better, he still has to print the notice. The Levant Herald is too fond of speaking praisefully of Americans to be popular with the Sultan, who does not relish our sympathy with the Cretans, and therefore that paper has to be particularly circumspect in order to keep out of trouble. Once the editor, forgetting the official notice in his paper that the Cretans were crushed out, printed a letter of a very different tenor, from the American Consul in Crete, and was fined two hundred and fifty dollars for it. Shortly he printed another from the same source and was imprisoned three months for his pains. I think I could get the assistant editorship of the Levant Herald, but I am going to try to worry along without it.’   

Part 2—Interview with Kemal Seven, Özgür Gündem.  February 1st, 2012

What is the response to the arrests of academicians like Professor Büşra Ersanlı on the justification that they were giving lessons at the academies?

Our academies, which are legal as far as they are lawful, have become the focus of interest in the world of knowledge, opening their doors to people of knowledge like Professor Ersanlı.  As we proceed, our intellectuals, writers, and scientists will have a positive influence and the door will be opened to an increase in both the participants and in the respect our academies command among the public. The result? The strengthening of our push toward an alternative education, an alternative politics, an alternative system which unsettles those who want to maintain the status quo.

With that in mind, what is the significance of the reaction shown by the academic world against this?

Sadly, the organizational level of our civil society is not effective enough to transform itself into a source of democratic pressure. Even under the existing conditions, however, the efforts on behalf of Professors Ersanlı and Zarakolu are reason enough for positive reactions. The press conferences, media activities, and marches organized by supporters from the faculty, from different foundations and other sectors is a positive sign. A group of professors have even given symbolic lessons at the academies in the name of not keeping silent. We are very grateful to them. We want that similar reactions and support through different actions continue to grow without delay. In order that we do not fall into the helplessness of that German priest who did not speak up against the policies of Hitler, every sensitive person must take their place in the organized struggle. Lovers of democracy, good-hearted academics like Professor Bursanlı are not easy to come by.

How must the academies go on in light of these operations?

I have full faith that a new and different model for living, of Kurdish origin, will be found soon--one that will warm us and light our way in this darkest and coldest of nights. Neither the global capitalist powers, who every day make the world more and more unlivable, nor those segments given to  betrayal and hypocrisy will make us give up our ideology which binds us by the heart and which we see as the salvation of humanity. Democratic Autonomy will enable the majority of society--a revolutionary, free, equal and ecologic society--to understand and take command of their lives to such a degree that it will open a new path to humanity. Our political academies, which are our hope for this utopia, must now reach a wider segment of society in a more planned, conscious, organized, decisive, and all-embracing way. With our strengthened teaching staff and new mechanisms, we must continue to widen our efforts, never forgetting our mission to become centers of knowledge and enlightenment for the people.

Life in Kedikoy OR A Cat's Tale

First of all, I want to say a big screw you to my home state of Florida's congressional candidate Dan Fanelli who wants us to pick out dark people as terrorists because "they look like terrorists". You're an idiot, Dan. People like you are the reason I sometimes feel that tinge of embarrassment when I mention where I'm from.
Anyway.
Delal, her sisters and I were standing by the bus stop, right outside of the entrance to the fish bazaar. Suddenly, a small orange kitten burst out of the alley onto the sidewalk, wailing at the top of its lungs. It dodged under one pair of feet, then another, darting in a panic under the benches, to the people waiting at the bus stop, and then finally under a municipal truck unloading bags of cement. There was something about the way it ran, in short bursts, bumping into things and then crying out, like it had completely lost its mind. I had a premonition for the little cat. Something seemed to be coming, something awful, I don't know. We tried to catch it, save it somehow but it was too freaked. After it ran under the truck, I could hear it crying still from somewhere beneath, but couldn't find where it was. Delal and I checked between the tires, up under the chassis, but it was nowhere to be seen. Then it was silent. The workmen claimed it had run off, but I was standing there the whole time and didn't see a thing. What would they care anyway? It was just another stray cat in a city teeming with them. It's death would be utterly meaningless to anyone but it, and instantly forgotten.
I think it somehow got up into the wheel wells, quiet there in that dark place, thinking it was safe, it's strange panic subsiding a little (I imagine its heartbeat, powerful, rapid, banging against its rib cage as if it wanted to burst out) not understanding that when the truck started up and began to move, it would die.
It seems such a pathetic, sad thing, something so small thinking it has found safety, and in that very shelter, in fact, because of it, about to suffer and die, to end, to end, to end. I can't stop seeing it, running crouched under all those people's feet, all those people who might help it somehow, but don't, can't, or won't. The fat housewives, the groups of grunting high school boys, the girls in high heels. Indifferent indifferent indifferent.
I find myself praying tonight. I don't know why or to what.
There was a mosque nearby. There's a legend about Muhammad, that one day his cat, Muezza, fell asleep against his arm, and rather than wake it when the call to prayer came, he cut off his sleeve so that he could get up without disturbing its sleep. It's a good story. Kindness, pity, compassion, is more important than the dogmatic following of a set of religious rules.
We get made fun, we Americans, for being too enamored of our pets. There is some justification in this--we're accused of treating our dogs and cats better than we treat each other, and some people do. And yet, how a person treats an animal is also a prelude of how they will treat people as well. I remember the kids next door who used to set lizards on fire, and there was something in the lizards doomed struggle not to die that made me sick to my stomach. It was wrong. I knew it, to do such a thing to another living thing. And I remember my Tibetan friend Tenzin, who stopped me from killing a roach we found in his house. "Everything wants to live," he explains. "Everything fears dying as much as you do." And he was one of the most gentle people I have ever met. One of the hadith (stories about Muhammad) says that God sent a woman to hell for locking up a cat until it dies of hunger.
Stray animals are quite lucky in Istanbul. There is an army of old men and housewives who pile food wherever cats congregate. Nothing goes hungry. Quite the contrary, they fatten on the finest foods. Roast chicken, high priced yogurt, white cheese, lamb. And yet when one gets in trouble, they are utterly helpless. I found a cat near the graveyard once. Something had happened to its neck. It looked like someone had tried to cut its head off--a huge gash ran around its throat. A vet had sewn it up with ugly looking stitches, but the animal could not move in a straight line or hold its head still. It moved in a circle and bumped into things as it ran, though it still seemed quite cheerful somehow, bouncing jauntily toward me in a playful way except for its grotesque twirling of its head. I fed it tuna. I couldn't take it home as both my roommates were allergic yet, after some calling around, I managed to find someone who would. When I went back to pick it up, however, it had disappeared. The tuna stood half eaten among the gravestones.
There's another hadith that I like. It sounds just like something that might come out of a Buddhist's mouth, particularly a Tibetan Buddhist. It was told by a man named Abu Huraira: Allah's Apostle said, "While a man was walking he felt thirsty and went down a well and drank water from it. On coming out of it, he saw a dog panting and eating mud because of excessive thirst. The man said, 'This dog is suffering from the same problem as that of mine. So he went down the well, filled his shoe with water, caught hold of it with his teeth and climbed up and watered the dog. Allah thanked him for his good deed and forgave him." The people asked, "O Allah's Apostle! Is there a reward for us in serving (the) animals?" He replied, "Yes, there is a reward for serving any living thing."
I don't know what I think of religion any more. This last story is beautiful, I think, and yet most "religious" folks would miss the point, and instead of showing mercy to living things, start building statues of dogs at wells and punishing people who don't leave the proper offerings or who can't quote the story verbatum. Or worse, start taking pictures of fuzzy kittens against rainbow backgrounds with Bible or Koran quotes beneath, feeling good about themselves and their piousness, while forgetting that the ones most in need of compassion are the mangy strays you are too afraid to touch--both human and beast. I'm getting preachy now. Oy vey. Mercy mercy mercy.