Pop Star Could be Prosecuted After
Questioning Turks' Militarism
By Nicholas Birch in Istanbul
Feb 28, 2008
news.scotsman.com
WITH the death toll in Turkey's operations against Kurdish nationalists in Iraq
rising daily, one of the country's most famous pop stars was in serious trouble
this week after she questioned deeply-engrained Turkish militarism on prime-time
television.
"I am not a mother, nor ever will be, but I would not bury my child for somebody
else's war," said Bulent Ersoy, during a broadcast of Star TV's hugely popular
Popstar Alaturka.
Visibly shocked, another presenter intervened to try to shut her up.
"May God give me a son so that I can send him off to our glorious army," Ebru
Gundes said, adding a nationalistic phrase repeated without fail at every
military funeral: "Martyrs never die, the fatherland cannot be divided."
But Ersoy, a transsexual who was banned from television by a military junta in
the 1980s, was not put off. "Always the same clichéd phrases," she riposted.
"Children go, bitter tears, funerals … And afterwards, these clichéd phrases."
An Istanbul prosecutor promptly opened an investigation into her for alienating
the people from military service, a crime punishable by up to three years in
jail. The broadcasting watchdog announced that it was considering banning Ersoy
from the screen.
These were predictable reactions in this profoundly nationalist country where
criticising the conscript-heavy army is a risky business.
From an early age, Turkish schoolchildren are taughtthat "all Turks are born
soldiers". School textbooks warn children that a man who has not done his
military service "cannot be useful to himself, his family, or his homeland". Not
recognised by the law, Turkish conscientious objectors face a potentially
infinite round of trial and imprisonment.
Yet, while Ersoy's comments earned her Turkish media opprobrium, the packed
audience in Star TV's studio applauded her warmly.
It is just the latest sign that, after 24 years of war against the Kurdistan
Workers Party (PKK) and 40,000 deaths, people are beginning to question the
state's traditional tendency to see the Kurdish issue merely as a matter of
security.
