BY CUNEYT ULSEVER
HURRIYET- I was pleased by a report in yesterday’s Radikal. ‘A report by the government’s Minority Rights and Cultural Rights Working Group has called for a re-evaluation of the concept of citizenship in Turkey and for a new, multicultural, libertarian and pluralist model of nation to be taken as a cornerstone,’ said the daily. If somebody had said such a thing just a few years ago, he would regretted it greatly, but now such things are being uttered at the Prime Ministry. In addition, the report writes, ‘Now there is a move towards not asking a country if certain people are minorities there, but rather accepting that there are minorities in that state if there are certain groups distinguished in terms of ethnic background, language or religion and which consider these differences an integral part of their identity.’ If one tries to implement the Treaty of Lausanne without question, said Milliyet daily columnist Yalim Eralp,
1. We’re insisting that the concept of minority is limited to religion. But under this, how can we defend our understanding of secularism? How can we say that we’re a secular nation opposed to religious discrimination? With this understanding, how can we call the European Union a ‘Christian club’ and accuse them of emphasizing the element of religion?
2. If Kurds are an essential element, do we have to make Kurdish an official language along with Turkish?
As Murat Yetkin wrote in Radikal, the heart of the report says, ‘Minorities are people who feel themselves different from the majority and considers this an indispensable element of their identities. The state itself decides whether or not to give them rights.’ I thank everybody who presented the issue more simply and to the point. I take offence at the concept of minority in the Treaty of Lausanne. We should move the word minority into sociology, where it belongs, in a world where anybody is in some way a minority, different from the majority. The state must give equal rights to everybody on a level playing field without discriminating between minorities and the majority.