Turks target Roma as tensions explode

Tensions flare as nationalist fervour threatens government reforms on ethnic diversity, with a mob forcing 70 people from their homes.

ISTANBUL // Ercan Koca says he and his family owe their lives to a well-locked door. "They tried for half-an-hour, but they could not break down the iron door," Mr Koca told Turkish media after his house in Selendi was attacked by a mob last week. "If they had gotten in, we would have all been killed. They set my car on fire with a Molotov cocktail." He said some of the attackers wore masks.

More than 70 people, all Roma like Mr Koca, were driven from their homes in Selendi, an agricultural town of about 8,000 people in Manisa province close to the Aegean, after being attacked by several hundred Turks. The violence started when a row between a local tea house owner and a Roma client escalated. Houses of Roma were pelted with stones while attackers shouted, "Selendi is ours and will remain that way," news reports said. Some Roma said they heard cries of "Hit the gypsies" from the crowd.

But Musa Yildiz, the tea house owner, said the Roma had sworn at him and hit him. Police did not make any arrests but later escorted dozens of Roma, including women and children, out of town. Some have been staying with relatives in nearby Gordes while others were re-housed in Salihli, further to the West. "There had been tensions between Roma and non-Roma over there for a long time, and they exploded last week," Yakup Cardak, the chairman of the Roma Culture and Solidarity Association, an organisation in the western city of Izmir, said yesterday. "Local authorities should not have let that happen."

The government in Ankara has promised to investigate the reasons behind the violence and offer solutions to the problems.  The events in Selendi have not only shocked Turkey's Roma community. They have also raised more general concerns that social peace in Turkey may be under threat, especially because the attacks on the Roma in Selendi coincided with clashes between other groups elsewhere in the country.

In the north-western city of Edirne, leftist activists demanding the release of several friends from prison were attacked by a group of nationalist Turks, and reports said the police had failed to intervene to stop the violence. The disturbances in Selendi and Edirne have been described as "lynching attempts" in the media.  Some observers believe that democratic reforms of recent years, which encouraged minorities in Turkey to seek more rights, have removed the lid from ethnic and other social tensions that used to be kept under tight control in the name of national unity. In the past, Turkish laws banned expressions of ethnic diversity, but the country's bid to join the European Union has changed that.

Leading politicians such as Abdullah Gul, the president, have praised the country's ethnic and cultural diversity as an asset. But opposition leaders have warned that the government's policy of reform is a threat to national unity.  "In the past, ethnic religious and other differences could become clear only in a very tight framework, voices against discrimination could not be raised," Oral Calislar, a columnist for the Radikal newspaper, wrote after the events in Selendi. But this was changing, he added. As initiatives by the government in Ankara to expand rights for the country's Kurdish, Roma and Alevi minorities made progress, nationalist reactions against the reforms increased, Calislar wrote.

Mr Cardak's Roma association in Izmir offers one example for the development Turkey has gone through. When he first founded the organisation in 1996, it was immediately closed down again because Turkish laws at the time did not allow mentioning the name of an ethnic group in the title of an association. Mr Cardak, 63 today, refounded the group in 2005, after Turkey enacted reforms that strengthened civil society. He said Roma felt they had more rights today.

Roma have been living in Anatolia for hundreds of years. The size of their community in today's Turkey is unclear because laws do not allow the categorisation of citizens according to their ethnicity; estimates vary between half a million and five million people. Mr Cardak said Roma were generally well integrated into wider Turkish society. "Of course there are prejudices that you cannot get rid of, but we have been living together for centuries and will continue to do so." He welcomed the discussion about minority rights and the government's reaction after the Selendi incident. "I don't think something like this will happen again."

Some Roma from Selendi are not so sure. They refuse to return to the town, even though they own houses there. Representatives from Selendi, including Nurullah Savas, the mayor, have visited some of the Roma that were driven out of town last week and asked them to come back. "You are our brothers," Mr Savas, a member of the right-wing Nationalist Action Party told the Roma, according to news reports.

But some Roma were quoted as saying that their children were still traumatised by events. One victim, Erdal Cetin, said some of his best friends in Selendi were among the first people to throw stones at his store. [e-mail]