BY MUSTAFA BALBAY
CUMHURIYET - Ahmet Taner Kislali once made a comparison. He says that if you emphasize differences in a country, there's Tito's Yugoslavia; and if you emphasize shared characteristics, there's Mustafa Kemal's Turkey. The possibility that Turkey could one day look like Yugoslavia is sometimes raised. I backpacked throughout the Balkans, including the states which emerged out of Yugoslavia's breakup. The Balkans have been defined as a region in which people very easily both love and kill each other. This definition shows how important emphasizing similarities and differences is. I discovered something along these lines while visiting the Balkans, namely, how the doors to neighboring houses are arranged.
The person who told me about this described the doors very sincerely. In Balkan cities, houses are adjacent to each other, and there are front yards and backyards. I was told that there's a little door on the gables of roofs so that neighbors can easily visit each other. In very bad weather, one can walk from one end of a street to the other without ever stepping out of the shelter. There's no better way for a street's residents to build love and confidence and love for each other! But then one day the people started to slaughter each other.
How did this happen? Kislali's remark has part of the answer. A person who lived on one of those streets summarized the change from brotherhood to bloodshed as follows: 'One day a childhood friend I'd grown up with started to look at me like he was an executioner. I asked him why. He told me that he had learned that I wasn't "one of them." We never saw each other again.' He continued by saying that once ethnic or religious discrimination starts, it never ends.
Of course, Turkey is affected by the Balkans as well, like all its neighbors. What's more, there are a lot of people in Turkey who came from the Balkans. It's also a mistake to simply say that Turkey will never be like Yugoslavia and that there's no need to fear. It's equally wrong to assert that if we continue this way, we'll end up like Yugoslavia. Apart from these two extreme positions, we can't ignore the existence of this danger. The first way to address this fear is to strengthen domestic peace. There's no secret prescription or magic formula for this. It would be sufficient to emphasize common denominators and turn them into shared benefits. Here, the basic responsibility falls on those who rule the country.
When integrity is mentioned, our first thought is of territorial integrity. This is natural and universal, but there are other elements just as important as territorial integrity - for example, not uniformity, but the integrity of human texture, or institutions or professions. Imagine a country which has protected its territorial integrity, but has a disunited people! What would this mean?