Masks and danger of restoration
Turkey is a country of masks; it is so obvious that this is the case. There are people, institutions wearing masks.
The state also wears one. There are still masks no matter how hard we work to take them off. This is a hard and painful work of finding ‘us' beneath these masks that requires patience. Because the initial zest is gone by now, we all display signs of exhaustion. We all now state that the AK Party and the prime minister are running out of fuel and energy.
The reason for this is not the fact that the republic whose 88th anniversary is being celebrated is a positivist-Jacobin engineering project. As usual, the case is too more complicated. Yes, in conjunction with the remark by Atatürk, who said, ‘We did a lot in a very short period of time,' we have done a lot in this 88-year period. For instance, the minimization of the presence of minorities in the country through state policies including three military coups, Tax of Assets, Trachea, 6-7 Sept incidents, the 1964 expulsions, the pains inflicted upon the Kurds through the Dersim Massacre and thousands of unidentified murders in the 1990s, the bans introduced before the Muslims to act like Muslims, massacres against Alevis and many other similar crimes against humanity…Frankly, it is a huge success.
And the gravest problem is that we have not confronted with all these events.
But we cannot put the entire blame upon the republic, right? Even though this is the general tendency, you cannot get to the right standpoint. In fact, our genes have been manipulated for at least two centuries. I am this close to saying that I wish the Ottoman state had never attempted to modernize the state and society. A so hybrid and ambivalent structure emerged in this country that the love-hatred relation created by this structure, the depression associated with extreme admiration and self-hatred prevented us from becoming people who developed harmony with the state.
There are many people in this country holding that it is necessary to get rid of the Republic and embrace the Ottoman heritage so that they could make a huge progress, a leap forward that would possibly represent a betterment of a few centuries. They uphold that the Ottoman had acquired a great opportunity in 1908 to convert the country into a liberal-democratic and pluralist state. The enthusiasm was great and visible. Muslim and non-Muslim subjects took the streets, wearing their traditional costumes and outfits and singing their local and national songs. The Red Sultan was toppled; the end of repression was over.
For instance, would Armenians who had a great share in this and provided a great deal of logistics to the Unionists during this process in Anatolia be still joyful had they knew that this revolution would lead to their total destruction just seven years later? Or would not the people on the streets beg for another period of reign of Abdulhamit had they knew that the Union and Progress Committee would take the Ottoman state to a destructive war that would be the end of the state?
But history does not hold speculations. And it is only laziness to yearn for the past in the name of future.
Just how the Kemalists categorically consider the pre-1923 period as a period of ignorance, Muslims have utopia of sanctifying the same period. True, from many angles, for instance Muslims and minorities, this era could be considered pro-freedom and liberal. But there is no need to exaggerate this. The Committee of Progress and Union (CUP) was all about Ottoman and it did inflict great harm to, say, Armenians and Greeks. Abdulhamit was not only positivist enough to consider annihilating the Armenians; instead, he used the Hamidiye Units to destroy thousands of them. It was the ‘honor' of the CUP to implement the ultimate solution. But both were mirrors and reflections of the Ottoman state.
As a local Christian who has basic knowledge of Islam, particularly Anatolian Islam, there is something that surprises me. For instance, I cannot understand why Muslims become nationalists. I have a farewell sermon of the Prophet of Islam in my office, a gift from a friend of mine. I read it a lot; but still I feel the need to read it again considering whether I am getting this wrong. The prophet prohibits promotion of a race or nation for a Muslim. I also know the relevant verses in the Koran. What kind of engineering is this that an Enverist-Kemalist ideology has created millions of Muslim-Turkish nationalists? It did not only created this but also combined and reconciled two different and opposite notions like Islam and nationalism; there is one saying by Jesus: “Who would not want to get rid of a scorpion knowing that it is placed in his chest?”
Why am I considering this problem? I have no problem with Turkishness. Had this republic was founded right and did not tend to destroy Muslims, Kurds and Armenians through reference to Turkishness, today Turkishness could have become an embracing notion like American and I would be able to call myself a Turk. In other words, what I mean here is not the circles referred to by the word Turk as a race; but what the Turkishness has done to us as an ideological notion.
Why I am thinking about this? I am doing this because only Islam stands in this country that would be able to ensure change and remain strong vis-à-vis Kemalism in this country. As a natural outcome of this, over the last 9 years, a religiously oriented party has created change in association with its support base. The reason I am writing in this paper is that the Gülen movement is the actual dynamic and force behind the democratic reforms. For this reason, I paid particular attention to the opening that Fethullah Gülen launched in respect to the native language by referring to Said Nursi.
But I am asking this as a brother of yours: how much are the Muslims aware of the remarks by Said Nursi in respect to the Armenian question back in 1910s? For instance, I see this level well behind the one held in 1910. Why?
This is the case because we are still Kemalist and nationalist; we have many masks. We only prefer being victims and put the entire blame upon the Kemalists. But is not this era over? Is not it time for us to take a look at ourselves, our tendency to sanctify the state, militarism, nationalism, in other words, the viruses that still keep us as Kemalists?
This is why the AK Party ceased to introduce further reforms; it has taken what is enough for itself; it acquired a suitable place within the state. And now Erdoğan is making no progress. And we do not know if we have any replacement for this. Like the post-1908, I am afraid we are going to enter a stage of restoration again.
- Created on .