The first day on my 7th grade, when I first came to Istanbul, I met this boy in my English class. We were introducing ourselves and since I was the new one, I became the center of the attention. I told the class where I came from, a small city from the east of Turkey; I didn’t know much English so my pronunciation was very poor. Everyone in that class started to laugh, and I put a bemused smile on my face too. Then this boy wiped out my smile with one single word: “Kurd!” Everyone in that class laughed again, yet this time with a different “ha-ha.” In these days, many people don’t want to accept the existence of Kurds nonetheless they use the nation’s name a swear word. I wanted to learn where they got this power: the right to ignore a nation they lived together for centuries, and then I found out, it was because of nationalism. I found out that the leaders and powers exploited nationalism for their ulterior motives, and they didn’t bother to take notice of the sufferers they left behind.
When I first decided to write about my word: nationalism, I was little bit worried in al fairness.  I was scared of being misunderstood and despised. Then I met with this author who shared the same ideas with me: Kurdish-Alevi author and politician Cafer Solgun who wrote the book “Dersim, Dersim”. In the book, he tells the unknowns about the Dersim Genocide, a massacre that thousands of people died which is done by the government and the military of 1937-38, and how the nationalism played the key role. “Dersim is a delicate matter for the government and the republic.  Making a clear procedure on this boil and avoiding the grievous possibilities are necessary by all means for the sake of the country” (Solgun 154).  This was proposed in the first Dersim Report by government officer Mr. Hamdi. The rebellion in the East by Kurds was occured because they wanted to speak their own language freely and be a part of the country, on the other side the military and the government wanted to supress the rebellion because they thought that Kurds were threatening the peace and the unity of the country. So the powers “made a clear procedure” and deleted a nation with the excuse of nationalism (154). As Ernest Gellner, famous British-Czech philosopher and social anthropologist, points out too, “It is nationalism which engenders nations, and not the other way round” (Gellner). It was nationalism that caused Dersim Genocide not a nation, and again, it was  nationalism that exposed a nation left to humilitation for the rest of it’s existence.
The  use of nationalism in the book lead me to find what foreign philospohers and historiens were saying. Was it just the Turkish historiens that believed nationalism was exploited? The famous historian and social activist Howard Zinn sums up the word as: “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people” (Zinn). The part surprised me was how the quote and Dersim genocide were connected. The slaughter was made under the flag of nationalism; it was so called a “procedure” (Solgun 154). The government and the military exploited nationalism, they showed the population in Dersim as a threat to the country, and they deleted a nation. However, the flag wasn’t large enough the cover the truths, the ulterior motives of the powers. The fact is that the genocide was a “civilization project”, and the ones who stood against it were “reactionists”, “feudalists” and “needed to be killed” (15). The problem is most of the Turks don’t accept the existence of Dersim  genocide even though it was proved with state-owned documents and reports. Nonethless they proclaim the ones who say it is real as traitors. This comes to my question again, where they get this power to ignore a nation? 

As I carried on my research to find the similar usages of the word nationalism in both Turkish and foreing people’s works, I searched for professional writings. The editorial I came up with by NSW’s Force Master Chief Andrew Tafelski supports the fact that nationalism was exploited by the Turkish government.

I believe that skepticism of religion in government is necessary. [ . . . ] Let us not forget that the Turkish government also has banned the Kurdish language and many Kurdish customs. [ . . . ] Did Islam make the Turkish government invent the crime of "insulting Turkishness"? Does Islam make the Turkish government deny the Armenian genocide and marginalize Kurdish citizens? No, I believe that nationalism does such things, and that is a far greater danger than any one religion. (Tafelski)

He believes that it is not the religion that helps “government  to marginalize Kurdish citizens but it’s nationalism”(Tafelski). I couldn’t have agreed more. Turkish Government uses religion as a guard and nationalism as a sword to wipe out the “delicate matters” (Solgun 154). Every right they take from innocents is covered up whether with religion or nationalism. But when it comes to someone’s right to live, the cover religion is insufficient. Government can’t use religion as an excuse to “deny the Armenian Genocide” or “ban the Kurdish language and many Kurdish customs” (Tafelski). So, they exploit nationalism, for the so called sake of their country.            

After I saw that my connotation of the word was almost the same in professional writings and previous sources, I wanted learn what a high-credible dictionary says. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, a subsidiary of Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. since 1964, nationalism is “a feeling that people have of being loyal to and proud of their country often with the belief that it is better and more important than other countries” (“Nationalism”). The dictionary meaning does not include the amount of blood poured, lives taken, nations slaughtered and countries destroyed for the sake of this so called Nationalism. It didn’t include because nationalism is such as secret weapon that it manages to kill in massive numbers but at the same time to quell and blind everyone. We are a few people who can see what nationalism is capable of, and what irritates me is the fact that we were a lot more than that. We were the “reactionists”, “feudalists” and “ones needed to be killed” (Solgun 15). And here I am with my question again: why does everyone so blind to see the truth?          

While the dictionary definition of Nationalism left question marks in my mind, I searched for the answers in myths. Myths’ usage is very important to the concept because I believe that the stories we grew up hearing from our parents shape our minds and ideas.  The reason why most of the Turkish people are blindly obsessed with their nation must be hidden in the morals of those myths. The myth Ergenekon, tells that Turks were defeated harshly by the Mongolians and they were prisoned in an area that was surrounded by mountains.  They fought for their independence and nation as their leaders and the God showed them the way. They set a fire that dried and burned the mountains as they proved how Turks can get their independence no matter what. Now, I can’t imagine a child listening to these kinds of nationalist victories every night and not becoming a flag waver. As the journalist-author and the chief editor of Today’s Zaman Newspaper Bülent Kene? analyzes in his article, “For them, Ergenekon was nothing but a legend that played an important role in the shaping of Turkish history and identity. Ergenekon is today nothing but a scenario or urban legend manufactured by the government in order to intimidate its opponents and send leading dissidents to jail” (Kene?). Government designed those Turkish heroist stories to create a  community who can’t stand the idea of a different nation living with them.  These brain washing myths and tales may seem a trivial part of nationalism in fact they prepeare the base.   The use of nationalism in myths partly answered my question about how Turks have an implicit faith to their nations; therefore I decided to get to the root of the problem, to see what school teaches about nationalism. It is an incontestable fact that school and lessons we took from our teachers form the basis of our ideas and personality. In the academic journal by Assistant Professor Doctor Bengul Salman Bolat, who makes researches based on nationalism and politics in Ahi Evran University, surveys a group of elementary student in K?r?ehir who take the lesson Ataturk's Principles and History of Turkish Revolution. The course aims to teach “the issues of the last periods of Ottoman Empire, the projects of sharing Anatolia and the realization of liberation through National Struggle [ . . . ]” (Bolat 2). She asked 15 well-thought survey questions mainly about the essentiality of the course and the objectivity of the text books/lesson materials and the teachers. The results she came up with were that: “text books don’t include the latest updates and arrangements of the new school year based on the subject and they are not inadequate” (3), Atatürk’s ideas are not effectively and objectively reflected to the students by teachers, and this lesson is considered as a “regime lesson”. (3) In spite of all these insufficient educational methods, the survey concluded that “%59.5 of the students strongly agreed that this course will contribute to their future lives” (5), and “%60 of the students strongly agreed that this course is appropriate for the goals of raising good citizens handing down the new generations, continuing the Republic” (5). However, only “%14 of the students strongly agreed that the lecturing of the course by following the units of the course book is adequate” (5), and most of the students didn’t find the fundamental repository of information sufficient.  In conclusion she said that “the lesson of Ataturk's Principles and History of Turkish Revolution is one of the lessons embraced by students” (9) even though students don’t find the educational materials adequate. Now if want to make a conclusion by own, I can say that the aim of the course is to raise awareness about the history of this nation and the struggles this country faced for the sake of their liberation and nation. And this is a fact that Ministry of education doesn’t include the Dersim Genocide, Armenia Genocide, The burning of Mad?mak Hotel and so on, in those text books. So it is clear that those biased and missing ideas children learn from teachers and books will form their point of views to nationalism. According to survey results, I conclude that even though the course wasn’t backed up sufficiently by the ministry of education which is appurtenant to the Turkish government, students are aware of the importance of the course and they embraced the Turkish Nationalism and Atatürk’s ideas clearly. The question is: how? How can a child grasp the importance of such a lesson that will be used for the rest of her/his life without having all the information? It is because they were taught  by their parents to raise the Turkish flag blindly no matter who hides behind it and they were taught to sing the national anthem like a deaf no matter who screams in it. And those parents, they are not cognizant of what they are doing because they were taught the same thing without questioning. With the research I made on this educational journal, I found my answer. I understood the mentality of those children. Now, I put myself in one of the children’s shoes who took place in the survey. Every day, I will go to school to learn the unquestionable victories and the wonders of the Turkish Hero, to make sure I will defend and protect the unity and safety of my country from “delicate matters”, then I will sing the national anthem and come back to home, get in my bed and listen to the heroism myths and stories my father tells. Now I can’t say nationalism wasn’t exploited, can I?   Most of the people are so blind with the non-existing victories they learn from legends and school that, they can’t see the real usage of the word “nationalism”. They can’t see how it is been used to shed blood of our own folks, and they can’t see how our government waves the flag of nationalism to avoid us see the bloody-sky. So how can I be sure that those children won’t grow up someday and ignore the existence of a race? How can I be sure that they won’t become the ones who exploit nationalism?  And how can I be sure that they won’t swear at my face as “Kurd”?