Muazzez İlmiye Cig: 'Turkey is going through a Counter-Revolution that will turn Turkey into a mirror image of the Islamic Republic of Iran.' (RT).
At the advanced age of 99, Muazzez İlmiye Cig is still a bright, active and even internet-savvy woman who takes an active part in the social and cultural life of the nation.Born in 1914, in the western Anatolian city of Bursa into a Tatar family that had migrated to Turkey from the Crimea, Cig has today acquired a particular notoriety as a vocal defendant of Atatürk's legacy, speaking up for women's rights and holding those in power to account by means of sending off acerbic letters.
After attending Ankara University's Faculty of Languages and History-Geography, as a student of the Hittitologist Hans Güterbock, Cig spent 33 years researching and studying the ancient civilizations of the Near East as Turkey's first Sumerologist. In the course of her prolific life, retiring in 1972, she has published 13 individual books and countless scholarly articles.
As a self-proclaimed product of the Kemalist Revolution and defender of the position of Turkish secularism, she has been more than outspoken over the past ten years as Turkey has slowly settled into its current post-Kemalist phase.
In her talk, Muazzez İlmiye Cig warned her audience that the ruling AKP is slowly turning the country into an Islamic land, actually accusing the PM and his followers of being perpetrators of a Counter-Revolutionary insurrection, aimed at destroying all the benefits of the Kemalist Revolution and Turkish secularism.
As a woman, Cig expressed her particular disquiet regarding the proliferation of head-scarfed women in Turkey today – as proof of the fact that the backward mentality of a male-dominated religious establishment is once again gaining the upper hand in Turkish affairs. As such, in 2006, she faced court charges that could have landed her in prison for one-and-a-half years had she been convicted.
In her book ‘My Reactions as a Citizen’, she maintains that the earliest examples of head scarves date back to Sumerian times, when veils were worn by priestesses who engaged in sex to distinguish themselves from other priestesses.
The trial was initiated by an Islamic-oriented lawyer who was offended by the Sumerologist's claims, actually accusing Cig and her publisher of "inciting hatred based on religious differences." In the end, the court acquitted Cig and dropped the charges.
In 2008, during an interview conducted by Daniel Steinvorth, Der Spiegel's Mideast and Turkey editor, Cig declared unequivocally that the "old cuneiform [writing] of the Sumerians describes how sexual rituals with young men were a religious requirement – one of many – for priestesses. These women wore veils over their faces to identify themselves. This is a historic fact. I'm a scientist. Whether this article of clothing [i.e. the head scarf, seen by Turkish Muslims today as an overt sign of modesty], a sex symbol, is suitable as a moral calling card today is something for others to decide."
In her recent speech she expressed her fears for the future of the country, blaming self-professed intellectuals for having missed the opportunity to enlighten Turkey's population at large. Cig repeated the oft-made claim that education is at the root of any progress and that lack of education is at the root of today's situation, which sees wide swathes of the population backing a political party diverging from the Kemalist line.
Muazzez İlmiye Cig literally stated that the country is at the moment going through a Counter-Revolution that will turn Turkey into a mirror image of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
This Counter-Revolution aims to dismantle the "Turkish republic, secularism, the legacy that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk left us," what she and others call the 'Turkish Enlightenment', as she expressed during the 2008 interview.Read the full story here.
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