Agos, 2 January 1997

A contest was held among the schools in some districts of Istanbul and pupils from various schools, including our minority schools, participated. Our children took first place in the contest for the districts of Şişli and Beyoğlu, and Kadıköy too I think, and they also did well in other districts. The topic of the contest was “Reciting the March of Independence”. Among the best reciters of the national anthem our pupils came out in front. It was nothing but a contest, but just look at what this contest brings to mind...

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In the immediate aftermath of the September 12 coup, they were raiding house one by one, taking people in, and locking them up in whatever place they could find. One of the places was in Samandıra in Istanbul. They’d turned a military barracks into a prison, and military toilets into cells. These cubicles were less than a square meter in size, and they were all in a row. They’d covered the toilet holes with wooden grilles. So this was where they locked up all the people they brought in –whoever they could find. It had been exactly eight days since they had brought me in with my brother. Now and then, they would take us upstairs for interrogation. After giving us our share of what they had to offer, they would take us right down again and lock us up.

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Night and day, we were subject to psychological torture.The soldiers made us sing military marches constantly. Every half an hour, a new guard would bash against the door, shouting. ‘‘Sing the march you bastard!’’ The march they made us sing most often was the ‘‘March of Independence.’’ Think about it: these men imagined that they could teach us patriotism by making us sing the ‘‘March of Independence’’ while we were locked up in those toilets. If you didn’t start singing, they’d unlock the door to give you one hell of beating. After you’d survive a few beatings you got some seniority, and the guards who came in next would give you some slack. Inevitably, they preffered to pick on the newcomers.

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Then they brought in a new group of prisoners. Hurrah... It was an onslaught, a realruckus. Almost all of them were Armenian. They packed them into the cells next to me. When the soldiers called out their names, I found out who they were. I recognised most of the names. From a conversation with my neighbour through the wall of our cells, I learned why they had been brought there. A pointless reason. None of them had committed any real crime. A student was being taken to Jerusalem to study, and at the airport they’d pulled over the clergyman who was taking him, and asked, “Why are you taking this kid to Jerusalem?” And then they rounded up everyone who’d had a part in sending him: the person who gave the scholarship, the person who received the foreign currency, the person who exchanged the money, whoever was even remotely involved. They stayed in Samandıra for a few days and in the end they let them all go apart from one clergyman. But that’s not the story I want to tell here. What I remem- ber best of those days were the magnificent concerts of ‘‘toilet choir’’.

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The minute they heard a soldier approaching, some of them would yell out ‘‘Commander, shall we sing the march?’’ And then they’d start singing and yelling the national anthem at the top of their lungs. Those toilets never witnessed a choir like that, I’m sure, and they never would again. Of course, I’m not saying this to belittle those people, but shame on the people who decided to teach us the ‘‘March of Independence’’ in those toilets. And shame on the mentality that gave them the idea. And so today they should understand from our children’s success in these contests that we are not — not yesterday, not today and not tomorrow — elements who should be forcibly taught the national anthem in toilet cubicles.