"şehitler ölmez, vatan bölünmez!"

So what does this Turkish phrase mean?

"Martyrs never die, you can never divide our country!"

Now, this probably doesn't mean anything to most of us, I realize, but it definitely got me thinking. Last night, I went to the Turkey-Greece game. It was a pretty boring affair, as far as football matches (soccer games) go; Greece 1 - Turkey 0. Turkey now probably won't go to the UEFA European Cup this summer. I'm not European, so while I'm a little dejected, I'm quite consolable.




Of course, Turkey and Greece have quite a history with each other. Only these two countries can fight their wars of independence against each other at different times (almost a century apart). And who can forget their shenanigans in the Aegean, Cyprus, etc. Things are pretty cool now, although horrifying earthquakes and massive forest fires can do quite a lot to bring folks together.

So if you haven't been paying attention to the news vis-a-vis Turkey right now, you're missing out on a lot. For starters, Turkey recalled its ambassador to the US for the past 10 days as the US Congress debated approval of a bill describing Turkey’s WWI-era mass killings of Armenians as genocide. Then, 13 soldiers were killed in Sirnak by the PKK (Kurdish Separtist Party) over the Bayram this weekend. Finally, the Turkish parliament approved military moves against [Kurdish Northern] Iraq Tuesday evening to try to put an end the problems.

And thus, "şehitler ölmez, vatan bölünmez!"

Football matches really aren't parallel to anything I can think of in the States. We don't have these massive outpourings of nationalism, at least not unless there is a Very Good Reason. The closest that I can come is any big event or gathering post-9/11, but even that doesn’t really touch on the atmosphere here. Nobody likes the John Mellencamp "This is Our Country" ads. We hardly ever rally around the flag, do we? And not to get political here, but does any other country ever have people running for Head of State on the idea that they are against a war that they are currently involved in?

It isn't like Turks are a monolithic ultranationalist people, but the crowd mentality kicks in, and football matches do matter tremendously, especially on a national scale. And since they matter, they are of course on every television in the country. And if they're on every television, then what better time to make a statement of national unity? A statement like "şehitler ölmez, vatan bölünmez!"? A crowd of 50,000 can make a tremendous difference – here in Turkey, one isn't going to find a protest that large anywhere except in a football stadium. It is pretty neat to say that I was present when the Turkish Nation demanded that something be done. This chant wasn't the only one sung. The most memorable one included the names of all 13 dead soldiers with the response, "We Remember!"

Another thing we Americans have a hard time understanding is Nationalism. We really don't have it, in the same way Europe does. Our ultra-conservatives still embrace the whole "America as melting-pot" idea. The best example I can think of to show how all-embracing we are is food: in no other country can you spend $60 on a Thai dinner, or at a Chilean or Ethiopian restaurant. We embrace having all of these different people here; we may not want our sons or daughters to marry them, but at least we recognize their right to exist. Even with the whole illegal-immigration issues recently. We don’t have a Le Pen situation, unlike France did in trying to force all the North Africans out of the country.

But Turkey? Turkey's funny. I couldn't even begin to explain it here. Basically, their laws say that if you are a Turkish citizen, if you have a Turkish passport, then you are a Turk. Period. Sounds great, hmm? Unfortunately, if you are a Turk, you aren't anything else. You aren't an Armenian, a Greek, a Laz, a Jew...and you most certainly aren't a Kurd. The word "Kurd" didn't exist in the Turkish government until recently. They just didn’t exist, even when groups like the PKK were demanding independence in their name and blowing stuff up. But Turkey has a history of a whole lot of folks nibbling away at their lands. The whole concept of "Nationalism" turned the Balkans from a peaceful mosaic community into, well, the Balkans. So when Mustafa Kemal [Ataturk] came into power and created the Turkish Republic, he basically created a Turkish Nation from scratch. New national history, new symbols, new everything. And he did a good job, because everything seems so old. Once again, it is all founded on the idea that Hepimiz Turkler, that we are all Turks.

But nationalism doesn't die, it just sleeps for a while. The folks in the Southeast, who didn't speak Turkish so well, wanted to start speaking Kurdish ;and eventually, because terror is nothing but negotiation by other means, the angrier of these folks started blowing things up. And now that there's a secure Kurdish base in Northern Iraq (the happy part of Iraq, for those of you following the War in Iraq from back at home), the angrier of these angrier folks have a lot more on their side of negotiations, including an American President who wants any sort of peace he can find.

So Turkey is friendless and alone and dealing with an internal enemy that just won't go away. What am I trying to say here? I guess that this is neither the end of the story nor the last time you'll hear about Kurds, Turkey, Iraq, and the rest between now and January. This This is just the beginning. And I get to be here for the opening scenes of post-Ocalan PKK.

For all of the books and all of the articles that I read about Turkey before I left the States, none of this really made sense until I heard (and was part of) the crowd last night. "şehitler ölmez, vatan bölünmez!"

Franklin Foer may have had something there when he said that 'Soccer explained the world', eh?