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Cigdem Toprak is a journalist and author. His book “This is our country too! Why being German is more than being German ”(Chr. Links Verlag) has been published.
When a Turkish friend in the bohemian Cihangir district of Istanbul asked me in September 2014 at our regular cafe where I had been for the last few weeks, I said: On vacation. “And where?” She asked. I said: In Erzincan. She laughed out loud and said to her friend, “Is there even a sea there?”
She, a Western Turkish woman from Antalya, aspiring actress who lived an international lifestyle in Istanbul, scoffed at the fact that, as a German-Turk, she apparently did not understand the word “tatil” (German: vacation). This mainly means beach holidays.
But he also scoffed at the fact that I had been to eastern Anatolia. According to his worldview, the summer weeks were spent at beach club parties in Cesme on the Aegean Sea, not in mud houses in the mountains of eastern Anatolia.
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It was a degradation, which, as a German-Turk with roots in eastern Anatolia, he should feel twice. What she was doing was so obvious that when she didn’t want to stop rubbing it, her boyfriend said, “Okay, that’s enough, you know exactly what he means.” me and everyone else I’ve told this to.
Degrades where you least expect it
Your comment hurt me, but I didn’t pass out. Because I know: it is not going to demonstrations for the preservation of Hasankeyf, the old fortress of the city in Batman province, which the Turkish government is going to flood to build a dam. She doesn’t tweet about how arrogant and outcast the Kemalist elite can be. It does not pretend to be something it is not. He is not on the left, he is not politically active.
On the other hand, finding degradation, arrogance, marginalization and racism where you least expect it, I have experienced it in my German homeland for as long as I can remember: among the political left. It occurs both in my personal relationships and in my professional environment. And it made my life difficult for a long time, it left me powerless because they tried to convince me that everything was fine with everyone except me, politically, socially and personally.
This is not open to criticism. If I had to choose between right and left, I would stick. My family has always defined itself politically on the left. I have relatives in Turkey who belonged to the left wing student movement. And I know many people on the left who are dying because of the double standards of many of their comrades.
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However, I notice that their disappointment with their political field makes them distance themselves from it, because I feel that they also do not feel capable of awakening the left. May they awaken from their sleep, may they be all and always human, good and correct. And it overlooks how inhuman, how evil, and how wrong they can be.
Leftists also reduce people to their origins
The political left is no better than it thinks it is fighting for. They also reduce people to their origins, they also discriminate, they also represent classism, precisely because they prefer identity politics to the class question, and there is also incredible cultural racism among them.
When I think of the AfD, of right-wing populism and right-wing extremism, I immediately think of all the voices that are harshly critical of it. For a moment I am relieved that there is a strong movement in Germany that is fighting for people like me.
The relief only lasts for a second, because then I remember all the experiences in my life that tell me: No, you don’t fight for people with a migrant background if you criticize the AfD or police violence against people with non-German roots. You fight for yourself.
The charge of repressing the Kurds as a Turkish woman
Why else do I have to experience exclusion, arrogance and cultural racism from people who understand each other on the left? My class teacher on the left called me no less a foreigner than anyone else, and also accused me that “we” (I belong to the Alevi Zaza) were repressing the Kurds in Turkey.
A German fellow student in London who had a plaque on her backpack that said “No man is illegal” ignored me for the entire year. A leftist journalist said about my studies at King’s College London that I had escaped my environment.
I look like a street girl, incapable of being intellectual
At a university, my bosses exercised their power and abused it when they realized that I had different political views than theirs, despite the fact that one of them initially yelled at the secretary because he mispronounced my name out of ignorance.
And in journalism I also realize that the liberal left-wing media prefer to avoid me because I think differently, I speak differently and I see myself differently from them. And it’s not about my dark hair and brown eyes, it’s about my heavily made-up eyes, my hoop earrings, and my leather jacket. I look like a street girl, incapable of being intellectual.
Oh, many leftists are racists
And yes, many leftists are racists too. I have had to experience that over and over again. It is a cultural racism that shows in how they treat the “other”. Many of them also exclude other things, they see them as inferior, they want to dominate what is not like them.
Especially where there is a consensus in our society that racism is a no-go, the phrases of many right-wing extremists begin with the well-known phrase: “I’m not a racist, but …”. And the left also hides its racism, but it works more cleverly for them because they say: “I am anti-racist, so I cannot be racist.” That is why it is increasingly difficult to expose racism.
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Jan Böhmermann, who is not a leftist politician, but one of the main opponents of the political right and financed with radio license fees for all of us, insults the Turkish president in a racist way and tries to make us believe that, of In this way, it protects the rights of the Kurds, journalists and the oppressed in Turkey. defended, although in reality he only pursues his own objectives.
Because for him and for many on the left, the problems of people with a migratory background are only tools for their political ideologies, or they serve to raise their profile. Left-wing populism today does not expect high electoral results, but likes and retweets, and therefore, the greatest good and the most powerful instrument of power in our digital age, attention.
The people they claim to speak for are just a means to an end
The dangerous thing about many leftists is that the so-called victims they are trying to speak for, the weak and people with immigration backgrounds, are dehumanized by them. They are treated as objects, not as people. And in his eyes, his political opponents are not individuals, but enemy images. All these lines of conflict, all these problems that exist in our society and that we think we only see with the right wing, do not prevent the political left.
But it is not just about saying that racism can be found everywhere, but also about the fact that the left is claiming and using this issue for itself and then thinks that they are the heroes of people with migratory backgrounds in Germany, that is to say, of the people. like me. They are not my heroes, they never were.
You think you can speak for me
Yet at the same time, they believe that they can speak for me, defend my rights, and believe that my political views can be derived from my identity, one of the many identities I have.
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The opinions of people with a migratory background are much more differentiated and complex than what the political left is trying to infiltrate into the public debate about exclusion and recognition as the only truth. I observe and experience this over and over both in my personal environment and in my journalistic work.
Not all people with an immigration background are bothered by the question “Where are you from?” Not all communities want to be seen as “German”, and not all see this country as a total racist. Their opinions about their experiences and problems in this country are not ideologically motivated. You are critical of society. More critical than the left.
Finding evil where you didn’t expect it makes you dumb
Why is this text directed to the left and not to the right?
Because humanity, tolerance, respect and recognition are not a maxim of a political field. They are universal and they show themselves, they are always revealed when you come across a supposed “other”. And many leftists are anything but tolerant and respectful of “others.” They can be authoritarian, marginal, arrogant, and violent.
But finding evil where you least expect it, that makes you dumb, especially when you must defend yourself stronger. It is also important to write this because I had less suspicions of discrimination and arrogance there, on the left.
