Reenchantment of Turkish Politics by Historical Metaphors

Published as "Secularism, and inventing history, is just a convenient tool in Turkish politics" in Turkish Daily News, 19 May 2007

Re-Published in French by Collectif Van as Le laïcisme et l'invention de l'histoire, sont juste un outil commode dans la politique turque


Politics has always been a mundane human exercise that has needed a little bit of imaginative help to get it going. The quest for sovereignty and its legitimization that once could have easily been done by sheer muscular power had to evolve into sophisticated tools that used cosmic frameworks or higher values. Gods, in their various mono or poly forms, have proven to be great transcendental aids that made sure a certain leader had an unquestionable power. Thus what was at stake, or what was being rebelled against, was not just the finite moment and its actors, but eternity.

Myth making in modern times:

The 19th and 20th centuries may have done a good job in providing different explanations of the universe, yet their aspirations too had supra-contextual appeals, at times almost religious, albeit without a god. Utopias, in their raw Enlightenment kinds, or Socialist, Communist and various other ‘ist' kinds were helpful to fill in the gap left by the death of God, by providing grand interpretations and end goals. Similarly, the Cold War was able to bring in clear meaning to an era that was characterized by bureaucracy, effective and mechanic solutions, and unpoetic scientificism. It presented a cosmic picture, a Manichean battle between dark and light, depending on from which side of the fence you looked. And once the wall collapsed, what emerged on the other side was the mundane politics of power and money again. It appears that the seduction of the neat worldwide separations is now finding an increasing appeal in the language of ‘civilizations'. Alas, we, the 21st century folks too do not have to face the fear of being bored to death while watching politicians sweating from their pulpits!

Continue Reading "Reenchantment of Turkish Politics by Historical Metaphors"
Nationalism and religion in competition:

In full contradiction to what social scientists (primarily European and north American) have forecasted during the last century, religion and nationalism are still the main actors of ‘re-enchantment' in the Middle East today. Not so surprisingly, re-vitalization of religion and nationalism are intrinsically linked to each other. The failures of secular Arab and Persian nationalisms and socialisms have fertilized the ground in which various Islamisms flourished. Since then, Islamism proved to be much more successful in providing imaginative readings of the imminent painful reality as well as millenarian promises to the masses burdened under the secular elite, who have not been able to give them a stronger hope. Each group's appeal and the commitment of their followers are continually strengthened by the presence and sharpness of the other. However, there is now a new twist to the old story: a memory boom we are witnessing globally. It is often noted that 95 percent of existing museums today have been opened after World War II. Today, more people visit exhibitions and enroll in civil societies that seek to preserve the past more than ever before. We now have memory tourists who travel to the places where their ancestors were from or where they fought. More movies are produced about past eras, and, books with a historical flavor, fictional or non-fictional, dominate the best sellers lists.

The past is the best playground:

Turkey too is not spared from this memory boom. Any visit to a bookshop, a quick online check of the best sellers, or a quick glimpse of soap operas on the TV or movies that are produced should give you enough evidence. In short, we are now witnessing an increasing popular interest in the past that is different from official controls of the past for nation building. On one hand, we observe the continuing difficulty nations and individuals face in promoting monolithic, homogenized narratives and thus identities, which are challenged by the localized experience of globalization. On the other hand, the same breakdown of the comfort of a clear imagination of who we are brings with itself a stronger desire to locate ourselves within smaller groups that form the larger society, or extra-territorial global groups defined on ethnic, religious, political or sexual grounds. When the fast speed of change in information, materials, living spaces and postal address are added to this breakdown, together with the sour taste the future oriented utopias of the modern era left in our mouths, the need for an anchoring becomes much more significant for individuals than the macro projects of the 19th or 20th centuries were. The past is always the best playground for anyone seeking to find a ‘golden age' to hold on to in the contemporary cacophony for a relatively clear sense of who ‘we' are.

De-politicized post 1970s Turkish generations, to which I belong, by and large do not have the same political zeal and thought-through ideals that our abis and ablas (older brothers and sisters) had. We are immune to a lot of the discourses that got their attention. But unlike their future looking ideologies, our eyes are on the constant lookout for a way of understanding the extremely complex present tense. In the world-risk society and instant consumption age in which we live, the future looks dim and far away if not irrelevant. The only relatively stable reference point left for us is the past, which has been nicely trimmed and beautified by the growing history industry. As we feel trapped in the dynamics of East versus West, as our image and identity is continually challenged by the criteria and critical eyes of the European Union, growing calls to accept the Armenian deaths as genocide, challenge our moral standing and self understanding and as economic uncertainty and global competition no longer allows the same expectation to “make it” that our parents had, we are truly vulnerable of being seduced and manipulated by historical languages for a momentary ecstasy.

Çanakkale and Ankara:

Thus, it is really no surprise that Deniz Baykal, head of the opposition party CHP, the old wolf of Turkish politics who is probably entering his final round for a chance to take the much-coveted seat, has been using a historical rhetoric against AKP in addition to the discourses of keeping the legacy of the secular republic that Atatürk established. Before the presidential elections, he declared that ‘Çanakkale cannot be crossed! Ankara too should not be crossed!' Çanakkale is the strait that connects the Aegean Sea with the Bosporus, where the Anzac troops suffered a heavy loss under Turkish resistance during World War I. The battle, which has given a sense of ‘nation' for Australians and New Zealanders, has also been a symbol of heroic Turkish resistance to invading forces. In Mr. Baykal's declaration Ankara clearly refers to the contemporary tensions of the AKP's Islamic roots and possibility of having a president of the republic from their ranks. In a sweeping sentence, two different contexts are melted into one. Its poetics may be catchy, but its actuality is far from charming. The battle in Çanakkale was against foreign nations trying to invade Anatolia, not against ‘Islamists' and its descriptions in Turkey have always been full of Islamic imagery and language. The civil cooperation, which the post WW I setting demanded against invading armies, is not the civil cooperation we need today in 2007 partaking in the elections or showing democratic discontent with the AKP government. With the highly emotive appeal to ‘saving our country against the enemy', Mr. Baykal, of course, is not asking for an armed conflict, but rather votes for his party to come into office. When the glamorous dress falls what is shown once again is good old politics.

‘Occupation and Resistance':

Mr. Baykal's rhetoric is not without its ‘intellectual' and sophisticated supporters. The book, Occupation and Resistance: 1919 and Today by Hulki Cevizoğlu, a popular writer and TV producer now boasts a third print run of 101,000 copies. Its concluding chapter, as well as the emotive sentences on the back cover of the book lead the reader to the intellectual and volitional response that was demanded by the people of the past who were committed to saving their country and who took up arms against the ‘invasion.' No doubt, the book is working well both for the financial and social standing of Mr. Cevizoglu in the eyes of certain segments of society. Yet, its long term cost to our country, which cannot be quantified, is much more than any positive contribution the book can ever make. With the wise help of hindsight, it does not take too long to realize that history is full of preventable conflicts that seemed inescapable at the time. The danger with the productions of historical similes, metaphors and poetries for contemporary problems is that the emotional response they create, which is the primary reason they are used in the first place, leads to their internalization by individuals for whom they become the non-negotiable lenses through which they interpret the world. And, since we have never managed to adopt a more pragmatic sense of time and past events, say unlike Americans, resurgence of historical discourses run the risk of awakening long dead animosities against enemies who do not exist anymore! As the history of racial and ethnic violence shows, when such feelings are awakened carelessly, sooner or later a substitute enemy will be found, who probably has nothing to do with the perceived danger. ……

The Banality of the Murders of Three Christians in Turkey

Published in Turkish Daily News, 21 April 2007

You have to learn one key element that forms the mental template, which rules Turkish politics and society, if you wish to understand what is happening and where we are coming from. It is not only the melancholy of a lost glory that we have inherited from the Ottoman Empire, but also a deep rooted “some people” syndrome. This syndrome began with the bitter experience of the European powers and non-Muslim minorities during the fall of the Empire. They sought to go on their own ways or tried to invade and colonize what we today call Turkey. Since then, every non-Muslim is viewed as a potential traitor and conspirator that seek to divide our country under the leadership of the Western powers. Within this mindset, today's powerful and secured Turkish Republic is under the same imminent inner and outer threat, which the Ottoman Empire was under before and after WWI. Step into a bookstore, read a Turkish newspaper, listen to the political and media elites, you will see that this is a reified truth that is internalized widely as “common sense” and is beyond any doubt.

Always ‘birileri' divides our nation:

The international community, non-Muslim minorities and various NGOs and intellectuals in Turkey have been asking for the free exercise of the most basic rights of religious minorities, that are protected not only by the Turkish Constitution and Penal Code, but as well as all of the international covenants Turkey is a party to. Yet, this request has always been interpreted by the politicians and wider public through the lenses of some people syndrome. “Birileri”, or some people, are trying to strengthen minorities in order to divide our nation. These birileri are not only trying to use the Human Rights argument to pressure Turkey and make her look “bad” in the eyes of the world, they are also the ones behind the persecution of minorities. When the Roman Catholic priest Andrea Santore was killed in Trabzon by a 16-year-old boy on 5 February 2006, majority of politicians and commentators declared that birileri were trying to hinder Turkey's EU accession. When a Protestant church in Odemis was attacked with Molotov Cocktails on 4 November 2006, it was birileri who were trying to embarrass Turkey. Not so surprisingly, the local authorities ordered the church to shut down its activities following the attack, because birileri had darker aims than just worshipping their God. When a Protestant church in Samsun was stoned and threatened in January 2007, it was birileri again who were trying to put Turkey in a hot spot. When Hrant Dink was murdered this year, it was not the plain fact that birileri who “loved their country” killed him, but some other birileri whose main occupation were to corner Turkey on the Armenian question.

Gendarme hunt on missionaries:

This “sensitivity” for the welfare of our country showed itself all through out 2006 and 2007. Turkish media reported with a great zeal that two Turkish Christian missionaries, Hakan and Turan were caught with a splendid Gendarme operation and taken to courts on 11 October 2006 as if propagating one's beliefs are crimes in Turkey. Apparently, these Turkish Christians, whom I know personally, were offering sex with younger girls and money to few innocent unemployed Turkish lads and threatening them with guns. Through out this aggressive activity “to convert” the lads, they have also not forgotten to insult Turkishness, Prophet Muhammad and the Turkish Armed Forces. Their fate still awaits a conclusion by the court.

All these years, Turkish media gave sensational accounts of 100 US Dollars being placed in the Bibles to lure Muslims. No court ever found a Christian or a church guilty on any of these charges or found the traces of generously distributed dollars, but the urban myth still continued. The State, which runs an effective apparatus that controls media did nothing to stop these wild accusations. On the contrary officials have echoed the same ‘common sense' that these people have one agenda and that is to divide our country. So it should come as no surprise to you when Necati, Uğur and Tilman were killed brutally by 5 young nationalist and slightly religious men, AKP MPs for Malatya, where the murders took place, have declared that birileri were trying to stir up Turkey right before the Presidential elections. Beneath all of the superficial condemnations of the murder, which is often limited to the first opening sentence, the rest of all of the comments point to good old dull international conspiracy theories.

The Elders of Zion replaced:

The human face of this national neurosis is the death of human beings, who have nothing to do with any of the perceived national threats. The dark side of our worldview is just human, all too human, nothing fancy and enchanting like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or the myth of birileri. As long as the media and politicians keep using Christians in the country as scape goats to the mundane failures of local politics and identity confusions in a global age, we will have more murders and attacks, that's certain.The mental template that was born out of the sad experiences of the past has paralyzed us completely. We are now failing to understand the present on its own terms and to move to a brighter future. Historical malady has removed the plastic energy we need to mold and renew ourselves as modern day Turks. It gave birth to an incapacity to mourn genuinely the death of two Turkish and one German human being by a bunch of kids who took the words of their abis (older brothers) seriously, to an incapacity to see that we have a significant problem of Non-Muslim minorities and that our perceptions of our country as a tolerant junction “where civilizations meet” is only believed by the marketing gurus of the tourism industry.

Not for saving the face:

I am a Turkish Christian and have known Necati personally for years. I attended the same church with him. He was a genuine man, who loved his country and people. However, neither Necati and Uğur nor any of us are allowed to love our country or even serve her. Somehow, our personal love for Jesus is incompatible with being a Turk and a Patriot. Somehow, no matter who we really are and what we really believe, what is important is what the officials and media have named us; Traitors! The Turkish State has a legal responsibility towards her vulnerable minorities. The improvements and grandeur public declarations of sorrow by the politicians should not be done only with the fear of the EU or to save the “face” of our nation, but because our State cares for her children and citizens. The State has a moral responsibility to do so! Even when the international watchdogs are not looking, even when the legal provisions are not in place, even before someone asks for protection, our country should be there for us. Our democracy and the national soul is only strong to the extent of her protection, respect and integration of her weakest members!

This will happen again

My heart bleeds as I write these sentences not just because of the death of beloved ones, but because as I read the comments and reactions to their murder, waves of fear and helplessness fills every single cell in this body of mine. I know, just like the other events, this too will be forgotten as the country is fixed on the Presidential elections. The myths that are allowed to be “truths” will still remain in the minds of people. We will continue to pray in our churches for our nation, but our nation will continue to see us as enemies and sooner or later, birileri who loves their country or are angry with the West will attack us again, as if we are foreign Embassies. And our deaths will never be tantalizing stories of international actors, historical battles and colonial intentions. We will die in the most banal ways; a depraved youngling seeking to assert his identity and be an active agent in a confusing age, finding encouragement from the careless statements of his writer, politician and religious abis, will find a kitchen knife or a gun, then use it. As our bodies will lay there on the ground, those abis, in the most banal fashion, will declare that birileri is trying to destroy Turkey, all along failing to notice that those birileri are so difficult to find because they are the very ones who are speaking!

Getting Islamism and Terror Wrong

Published as "A Letter to the West from an Ex-Muslim Eastern Christian" in Turkish Daily News, 14 April 2007


A lot of things have changed since 9/11 attacks. None of us can say that we live in a safer or better world now. On the contrary, things have never looked this pale or chaotic before. We all realized one thing for certain. We are not immune, strong or distant from the problems of others as much as we imagined ourselves to be. In the old days, the ‘others' were allocated in far away exotic lands which we had no interest in. The battles were fought and problems were dealt with far away from us. Now, it is right here, at the centre of homelands, where we realize and experience that we all share a common humanity and vulnerability with millions of people living in this planet with us.

With this realization comes along a new wave of healthy and unhealthy panic attacks. You turn on your TV, you read the news, and you see an increasing amount of foreigners on your streets. The media representations are full of radical preachers of hatred, with foreign words like “jihad,” which you probably know more about now than an average Muslim do.

There are the prophets of doom, who preach a Manichean worldview that divides the world into two camps, the good and the bad. The civilized-who embodies higher values and the backward ones who only exist to harm or destroy. Then, there are the wise men and women of letters, learned ones, who provide legitimization for popular distastes of other cultures and peoples.They see "irreconcilable or unbridgeable distances" in what Freud called the “narcissism of minor differences.” Thus the clash that we see outside becomes fixed and eternal, a clash of inherently different, imaginary “civilizations.” There is no hope for a common ground or a shared future. Within this picture, there is a come back of sentiments of Enoch Powell, who saw an inescapable result of “rivers of blood” when the races wanted to be mixed during 60'ies and an ultimate danger that they would in some 20 years have more power than the white man.

The problem with such a worldview of opposing two poles, which is clear and neat and problem free is that it is only a prescriptive transference onto reality rather than a descriptive observation. It isn't there as it is, but once you believe it, you see it everywhere. However, the issue here isn't just opposing religions, or religious texts. There are so many shades of the black, as well as the white. Above all there is so much that you need to bring in the argument besides verses from the Qur'an and the Hadith (sayings of Prophet Muhammad).

When Muslims see a monolithic, united Christian West, which actively seeks to destroy them, we stand up to the task of showing that this notion of “Christian” West does not exist, as Christians in the West fight to remain in the public domain. When Muslim preachers and media represent the West as a unified body that is all about money, immorality, and decadence with inherit thirst for blood and destruction of innocent people, with no fear of God, we rightfully challenge such a perception. When France and the UK, Greece and the US, Spain and Sweden are perceived to be united Christian nations, we laugh at how someone cannot realize the deep differences that lie between these countries. But sadly, we see no problem in reducing Islam, and the Islamic people to one simple box.

Allow me to look at international jihad groups like Al-Qaeda for a moment, not with the usual, “this is the true classic Islam expressing itself, see its in the Qur'an” hermeneutical lenses, but as they really are. International jihad networks are uniquely late modern, rather post-modern in their frameworks, ideologies, organizations and aims. Unlike the traditional jihads, these new formulations have no particular geo-political aims of capturing a specific land, or defending it or leading it. Hamas and Hezbollah do have particular tangible goals that they seek to achieve with the use of force, whereas Al Qaeda is engaged in a global battle with no practical goal in mind except that of making a point and fighting a metaphysical war against the devil wherever his manifestations are found. In traditional jihads, the order is given by a leader with direct details and limits, whereas, what we see now is a democratized structure, which gives the individual the chance to fight his own jihad as a personal religious ritual.

In traditional jihads, there is a clear expectation of adherence to certain doctrines and religious and moral behaviours. But now, these doctrinal demands do not exist. Everyone can be a member. You do not even have to be pious. We now see suicide bombers who frequent nightclubs, consume alcohol and engage in acts which are not deemed “Islamic.” In the old days, what we wanted to see the most in our profiling of the terrorists was the naive youth who grow up in depraved places and had no education or future. Now what we see is terrorists with college degrees, fluent in various languages and who have grown in the West where they have been sheltered from much of the suffering they seem to be reacting against. It could have been a lot easier for us if they were just merely brainwashed poor lives. Yet their very ‘sane' profiles lead us not to psychoanalyze them, but to give an ear to what it is they are trying to communicate.

I do not have time here to go into deeper analysis of new jihad movements, let alone the change Islam itself has been going through for the last 5 years. A change full of inner conflicts, growing calls for reform as well as growing attraction of fundamentalism. Suffice it to say, the mental boxes we hold, or our perceptions of Islam today is neither able to incorporate the present reality into our neat and tidy perceptions of Islam, nor be of much use as a basis for policy making. Yes, there is a correlation between certain Islamic doctrines and what we see today, but correlation does not mean causation.

The context within which such doctrines and movements find favor and is lived out is what we need to address if we want to see an end to this chaos. This context is full of historical and continuous mistakes of imperial agendas, neo-con masculinities, wars, and economic deprivations. Above all, this context is a dehumanized zone, in which some see terror attacks as a rational option to be heard by the rest of world. Within this context, the only way they find to assert their humanity and worth of life is through death.

As a Muslim background Christian who live in the Middle East but has been educated in the West, I seem to fit nowhere in this two poles world. The World of Islam fighting an imperial and immoral West. The West, which embodies justice, democracy and civilization, fighting a backward, blood-thirsty East. I am not at home anywhere, nor I am allowed to be, as random security checks at the airports or tensions with local authorities continually remind me my anomy. But as someone who is between these two narratives, I only see the same fear of the other. The fear that the other will harm, destroy or diminish us. This fear combined with narcissism of ourselves blinds us to what we share in common with them. The other becomes the embodiment of evil, who is effaced, united under one banner, no matter who and how different they are. Thus the Allies talk of “collateral damage” and the Islamists see no one in the West innocent, including fellow Muslims who do not follow their jihad, thus they can all be killed in impunity in a bomb attack.

When you are hurt, or fear for your life, or are unsettled by the presence of people who are not like you, the instinctive reaction is to fight back, hurt others and exclude the strangers whom you see as the main cause of your problems. It is in fact what the US has done since 9/11 attacks. It has launched a global metaphysical war against terror, with no actual physical target or enemy, except a language of good versus evil. The enemy is everywhere, yet nowhere, the enemy is no one particular yet at the same time everyone. On the tide of such a psyche and political theology, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq destroyed “pre-emptively” lives of millions of people, grotesque Human Rights abuses at Abu Gharib, the Guantanamo Bay, secret CIA prisons and operations, kidnappings has hit the tabloids and the souls of Muslims. All along it only proved Nietzsche to be right, “those who fight against monsters should be careful not to be monsters themselves.”

It appears, in a very common sense way but apparently not found that commonly amidst policy makers, that violence begets violence. How we have responded thus far has only escalated the problem. The urge to dehumanize the others in order to feel safe for a moment, only makes us more vulnerable to be hurt by the others who will not stand sheepishly as their lives destroyed. The fuel, which gives energy to Islamisms isn't the Qur'an. It is not only the absence of any other viable option but also the previous and sadly the present tense mistakes of Western governments that do not accept and grant the humanity and inherent value to the rest of the world and that continues to see the world as its legitimate play ground. The only way to counter the destruction that surrounds us isn't more military power, tighter borders, further dehumanizing tortures, but to grant the other the same humanness we think we posses only. This way goes through mourning in recognition of the deep wounds we have caused each other, so that we can, after enough tears, embrace each other and concile, if not reconcile.