Saturday August 25 10:16 PM ET 
No Racism in Turkey, if You Say You're a Turk
By Steve Bryant 
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - ``I am Turkish. I am honest. I am hard-working.'' 

So runs the oath sworn in Turkey. Its basic assertions come easily to children, who yell them
with gusto at assemblies in junior schools across Turkey each morning. 

But for many, particularly Kurds, it gets harder with age to accept the simplicities of the
oath, based on a speech by national hero Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1933, and which ends:
''Happy is he who calls himself a Turk.'' 

For some, that careful wording makes being Turkish a matter of self-description, not birth,
and is the heart of a country that is determined to allow no state discrimination between any
of the myriad ethnic groups and minorities within its borders. 

For others it amounts to forced assimilation. 

Constitutionally, a Turk is defined as any citizen of Turkey -- Kurdish, Armenian, Greek,
Chechen or, as is most often the case in this changing country, an ethnic mix. 

``The founders of the republic, 60-70 percent of whom would have been minorities
themselves, were making sure the word Turk would not be monopolized by ethnic Turks,''
says Professor Gun Kut of Istanbul's Bosphorus University. 

The objective, he says, was a state blind to ethnicity. 

GROWING UP KURDISH 

For Kurdish Institute Chairman Hasan Kaya, the oath is a daily reminder of an
``unconscious, unorganized mentality of racism.'' 

``If you look at the state textbooks and at the education system and read between the lines
you find it all places a subconscious mentality of racism in the minds of children,'' Kaya says
in small offices where scholars compose Turkish-Kurdish dictionaries and research Kurdish
culture and language. 

Kurds make up by far the largest ethnic group that does not have minority status in Turkey. 

In keeping with its refusal to recognize ethnic difference, the Turkish state never asks people
their racial background but various estimates put the ethnic Kurdish population at 12-15
million of the total Turkish population of around 65 million. 

Kaya is on trial for allegedly teaching Kurdish without permission. Official curbs on Kurdish
education and broadcasting stem from fears that awarding minority rights could fuel violent
Kurdish separatism and lead to the kind of splits on ethnic lines that helped destabilize the
Ottoman empire. 

Born into a northern Iraqi Kurdish family with a tradition of political involvement, Kaya
says he sensed at an early age that all was not right with the official, all-encompassing
''Turkishness.'' 

While a thousand official sayings and stories exalt ``the Turk,'' only playground insults deal
with Kurds. 

Advocates of both positions will be representing Turkey at the United Nations ( - ) World
Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance,
which opens in Durban, South Africa on Friday (August 31). 

Neither the Foreign Ministry delegation nor the representative of the Human Rights
Association (IHD) expect Turkey's struggle with ethnicity to hit the agenda at Durban. 

But if Turkey can resolve how to treat groups that wish to differ from the strict official
vision of a country united by the one Turkish language and heritage, the country's path to
European Union ( - ) membership would look more open. 

A 17-year-old conflict with Kurdish rebels might fade, and Turkish Kurds might have TV
and newspapers in their own tongue. 

SHOOTING KANGAROOS 

Official Turkey denies any race discrimination. 

There was a prickly reply to a suggestion from the European Commission ( - ) Against
Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) that the country might benefit from laws preventing
discrimination: 

``Such provisions would suggest that there are such discriminations in the country. In the
present setting this would be tantamount to prohibiting the shooting of kangaroos in
Turkey,'' answered the Turkish officer on the commission. 

The Kurdish activists who pass through courts and jails each year are in trouble for
challenging the law and the state, not for their ethnicity, officials say. Even the activists say
Turkey has little or none of the violent racism seen -- often directed against Turks and Kurds
-- on the streets of western European cities. 

There are outbreaks of violence against Kurds, such as rioting in the town of Susurluk in
April when police found a young girl murdered in the home of a man thought to be Kurdish. 

``Sparks fly and they are attacked. It has happened in a range of places,'' says Selahattin
Esmer, who will represent the IHD in Durban. ``But despite a violent and lethal war (with
Kurdish rebels), despite that, in the wide majority there is no enmity against Kurds.'' 

What many find is an undercurrent of prejudice against Kurds, many of whom have been
driven to western cities by fighting in the southeast or have moved to Turkey from Iraq,
fleeing gas attacks and the tanks of the Iraqi government. 

While a U.S.-protected Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq now gives Kurds there a measure of
stability and peace, in Turkey they find greater potential for economic success, as long as
they are prepared to find happiness in calling themselves Turks. 

ACCEPTANCE WITH CONDITIONS ATTACHED 

``The so-called reality that 'there is no racism in Turkey' is constantly announced but is true
only with this condition: that you accept Turkishness,'' says IHD chairman Husnu Ondul. 

``If you accept you are a Turk, you can rise, you can be of Kurdish origin and be speaker of
parliament or prime minister but the moment you say 'hello' in Kurdish, you're in the soup.'' 

Others question how far Kurds can really rise into the elites of the Turkish state and whether
examples such as former parliament speaker Hikmet Cetin are exceptions. 

``That's a great claim that needs proof,'' says Kaya. ``Let's look at the top ranks of the foreign
ministry, the interior ministry, the military, the intelligence services and see.'' 

For decades, the existence of Kurds was officially denied and their language dismissed as a
debased dialect of Farsi. 

Kurds were described as ``mountain Turks,'' a clumsy formulation Professor Kut ascribes to
the fact that rebellions and uprisings meant it was the security forces who formed the
Turkish state's ambassadors to Kurdish regions. 

``I do not blame Kurds who are offended by it but it is a misunderstanding on both sides,'' he
said. 

``In their simple way, the military said 'You are not different, you are the same people as us,
you're Turks, in fact, you're mountain Turks!'. The effect has been tremendously negative,''
he said. 

More than 30,000 soldiers, civilians, and rebels, most of them Kurds, have died in fighting
with the Kurdistan Workers Party, which says it has now abandoned armed struggle in order
to win Kurdish cultural rights peacefully. 
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