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[INTERVIEW] Seeking dignity in Turkey’s soundscape

Turkish Minute

A general view shows the minaret of Ulu Mosque in the city of Antakya in Turkey's southern Hatay province, on August 21, 2022. (Photo by OMAR HAJ KADOUR / AFP)

Bünyamin Tekin

When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?*

 

If, despite the fact that death is inevitable, you attack instead of fleeing, or tell the truth to those in power, you are expressing your nature, i.e., your dignity.

Although it is difficult to imagine what dignity means, some scholars have endeavored to find it through negation, that is, to understand it by looking at what violates dignity.

If one considers oneself worthy, i.e., possessing dignity (Würde) in the words of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, it is humiliating to submit to the whims of a person or persons one considers equal when there is no accountability or redress that can be claimed against them. This violates human dignity.

Sevan Nişanyan, a 67-year-old Armenian writer, linguist and tourism professional who was born in Turkey and now lives in exile, addressed an audience interested in such a thing via video. He spoke about how it is impossible for someone living in Turkey to maintain their dignity when the Islamic call to prayer (adhan) is heard five times a day over loudspeakers at ultra-high volume.

Nişanyan is a Turkish citizen of Armenian origin. He knows his country from coast to coast and strives to show it to others through his work.

“His eclectic, intellectual and eccentric personality and pitilessly sharp pen,” as a friend writes, were highly controversial in the past because of his unyielding opposition to anything he perceived as unjust.

Nişanyan did not mince his words in this matter as well.

“I know of no other attack as disgusting as the adhan over loudspeakers. [It is] rape, harassment at the level of grabbing people’s private parts. This is one of the most horrible aspects of life in Turkey,” Nişanyan said.

When his remarks made the rounds on social media this week, all hell broke loose.

Islamists, or people who revere Islamic values, took aim at him for “humiliating their faith.” This culminated in the Turkish religious authority filing a criminal complaint against him, stating that he should be prosecuted for “insulting public officials in the performance of their duties” and “inciting the public to hatred and hostility.”

Now there are two parties claiming humiliation.

Nişanyan says the adhan through loudspeakers is humiliating, while some Muslims say the writer humiliated their faith.

“It is known to everyone who lives in Turkey. The competition in the volume of adhan, which is becoming a social weapon, is disrupting social life in Turkey to an unbearable extent. Especially in the last 10 years, the volume of the adhan has increased more and more. It has become an unbearable, politically charged attack that is repeated five times a day,” Nişanyan told Turkish Minute.

The issue of high decibels in the adhan is not new and is certainly a debate with Islamist proponents of low decibels.

One of the most prominent Islamist writers in Turkey, the late Mehmet Şevket Eygi, repeatedly protested against the loud adhan through loudspeakers.

“The adhan over loudspeakers and its extensions, such as the salah and other loud chanting rituals, in my opinion have nothing to do with Islam, worship, customs or tradition. It is a political attack, a means for certain mentalities to tyrannize society by shouting at horrendous volumes, ‘The public space is ours, and you must endure it’,” Nişanyan claims.

“It’s like someone approaching you in the street and shouting in your face. This is one of the greatest insults you can experience in social life. Someone comes up to you on the street and shouts in your face, spits.”

Nişanyan clarifies that he has nothing against the adhan as an Islamic rite.

“I have always held this opinion. I have no objections to the adhan itself. I have no objection to people expressing their beliefs and customs audibly within their traditions. In fact, the adhan has always been recited in the unaided human voice in the Islamic tradition for over 1,400 years.”

“A harmonious voice from afar amid the hustle and bustle of daily life is beautiful, regardless of your religious affiliation. But what we are currently experiencing in Turkey has nothing to do with this beauty. It is an assault, a violation,” Nişanyan emphasizes.

This scene, in which an Armenian writer from Turkey expresses his displeasure at the loud adhan, may give many outsiders the image of a non-Muslim rebelling against Muslim domination. But does the person who uttered the complaint make this connection? In other words, does he see the noisy adhan as a continuation of a larger unjust rule or as a modern phenomenon?

“Traditionally, in societies where modern law and democracy had not yet taken root, religion was an element of coercion. People were forced to adhere to the rituals and customs of their religion. This was the case worldwide, perhaps even more so in the Islamic world, but I don’t think it was much different from other societies,” Nişanyan says.

For him, the root cause is the fanaticism of today’s Islamists, which is a reaction to another fanaticism, that of country’s secularists.

“Since the founding of the Turkish Republic, both the Kemalists, who initially brought modernization, and the Islamists, who gained prominence as a reactionary force in the 1980s and 1990s, have expressed an unbridled and boundless desire for control,” says Nişanyan.

Kemalism is the strictly secular political ideology and principles associated with the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and includes a strong and pronounced Turkish nationalism.

Kemalism was until recently the official ideology of the Turkish state.

“In Turkey, as you know, there are two kinds of fanaticism, two opposing currents that dominate society. One is Turkish fascism, which is summarized under the term Kemalism, and the other is Islamic tyranny, which in my opinion arose mainly as a reaction to Kemalism.”

Being Armenian in Turkey, a country that to this day denies the Armenian genocide of 1915, is no easy task.

An estimated 1.5 million Armenians were killed between 1915 and 1917, in the final days of the Ottoman Empire.

On the pretext of the Christian minority’s alleged conspiracy with adversary Russia in World War I, Armenian populations were rounded up and deported into the desert of Syria on death marches in which many were shot, poisoned or fell victim to disease, according to accounts at the time by foreign diplomats.

Turkey, which emerged as a secular republic from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, acknowledges that 300,000 Armenians may have died but strongly denies it was genocide.

When asked if his Armenian identity plays a role in the backlash he has faced, Nişanyan indicates it has.

“Undoubtedly, it is not common in Turkey for an Armenian to speak out on national issues and matters of public interest. This shocks people and leads to various reactions. This is typical behavior for both the Turkish fascists, who call themselves Kemalists, and the Islamists.

“Normally, the reactions of the Kemalists are more violent, vile, aggressive and threatening. The Islamists tend to be relatively gentle towards non-Muslims.”

Nevertheless, Nişanyan believes that the situation in Turkey in terms of secularism has deteriorated greatly over the last 10 years.

“In the last 10 to 15 years, this situation has gotten out of control. The principle of secularism used to be taken more seriously in Turkey. The idea that individuals are not obliged to belong to a religion or respect its symbols was widespread in Turkey from the 1930s until the early 2010s.”

Turkey, once praised for its blend of Islam and democracy, has seen increasing repression, particularly after a coup attempt in 2016, which has served as justification for a crackdown on civil society and the consolidation of power in the hands of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. This shift has weakened the separation of powers and the right to political participation.

International observers are seeing a rise in nationalism in Turkey, a trend that is welcomed by both the ruling and opposition parties. Erdoğan’s decision to convert Hagia Sophia in İstanbul into a mosque and the growing influence of the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) are interpreted as signs of the Islamization of the country.

However, Nişanyan warns against glorifying the past.

“This does not mean that there was freedom of speech or opinion in Turkey at that time. Other things were forbidden. Speaking disrespectfully about the dogmas of Turkish fascism or opposing them was considered a serious crime and was prosecuted. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the 21st century, the Islamist faction could not say: ‘They are fascist, we are open-minded.’ Instead, they chose the answer: ‘If they are fascist, we are even worse’.”

Speaking truth to power

Turkey’s eighth president, the late Turgut Özal, once set out to unite “four leanings” in Turkish politics: liberalism, Kemalism, conservatism and nationalism.

For someone who observes Turkey closely, this is a difficult, if not gigantic, task.

Then it is certainly no easy task to unite them in anger against you, as Nişanyan does with his unflinching criticism on sensitive issues.

The writer is often attacked on social media for his outspoken criticism of founding father Atatürk’s legacy and the way his followers idolize the man.

In 2014, he was imprisoned on charges of illegal construction over the renovation of a village. His efforts put Turkey’s western town of Şirince on the tourist map.

Nişanyan says he just wanted the place to be nicer and attract visitors. Who are the people telling him he can’t do that? “To hell with them.”

After escaping from a low security prison in 2017, Nişanyan applied for asylum in Greece but was deported in January 2022 because, according to Athens, there were problems with his residence permit.

After a short stay in Armenia, he now lives in Montenegro.

He was previously convicted of blasphemy in Turkey in connection with a blog post from 2012 in which he defended an Islamophobic film.

The ancient historian Thucydides stated that “right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

The fact that the weak suffer what they have to suffer is an affront to human dignity.

And dignity is a recurring theme in Nişanyan’s story.

For him, it is one of the central questions of existence.

Resisting the adage “Might makes right” is one of the greatest tasks of the individual.

“Depending on the circumstances and context, I have always expressed my opinion openly and clearly and used strong words at every stage of my life. I have not avoided this in the past and will probably not do so in the future,” he replies when asked if he would continue this harsh criticism in his home country of Turkey.

However, he is not hopeful about the prospects of returning home.

“A return to Turkey does not appear to be imminent. My return may only be possible after a change of government and a general amnesty. However, this does not seem likely in the near future.”

* The quote comes from a sermon by John Ball, a 14th-century English priest who played a prominent role in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. In this context, “delved” means to dig or to engage in agricultural work, which refers to Adam’s role, while “span” refers to spinning, a task associated with Eve. These terms symbolize manual labor, emphasizing that in the earliest times, without societal hierarchies, both men and women contributed equally to labor and survival, without distinctions like class or status.

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