What Turks Have Been Doing to Turks!

Çetin Altan, one of Turkey's master writers, skillfully ridicules our self-flattery. Our being proud of ourselves as the only democracy of the Islamic world even though we have scuttled the ship of democracy six times in 60 years is probably something of an example of this. What perhaps also falls under this category is our boasting of being the most tolerant society of the world even though we have made this soil an unlivable place for hundreds of our intellectuals and have subjected our minorities to terrible treatment in the last century. Doesn't the treatment we have deemed fitting for Fethullah Gülen and Orhan Pamuk, who have been included in a list of the "100 most important intellectuals" by Foreign Policy magazine, say everything? You can extend the list of consolation as long as you want. Altan describes such consolation as "Turkish propaganda against Turks" since it has no objective reality or even runs completely counter to the present situation.

Similarly, we have very positive, pleasant and braggart sayings about Turkishness. For instance, "One Turk is worth the entire world," which places emphasis on the physical strength of Turks, tops the list of these sayings. Another is "How happy is he who calls himself a Turk," which calls on us to be proud of our Turkishness and which is attributed to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey. Then we have a saying that implies a Turk's absolute loneliness in the world and that no one but himself could be his real friend: "A Turk's only real friend is another Turk." The connotation of this saying, which utterly smacks of paranoia, is obvious. However, the reverse of this phrase implies that Turks are real friends to one another and that they never do one another any harm. Is that really so?

We should acknowledge that those who view Turkey from the outside can see much more clearly that this is not really the case in Turkey because most of the time we as Turks can easily give any foreign country a run for its money in harming one another and harboring hostile feelings against one another.

I personally think that some figures in Europe, such as European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn and Joint EU-Turkey Parliamentary Committee Co-Chairman Joost Lagendijk, who have sincerely put their trust in Turkey's democratic transformation, discern exactly this — i.e., the Turks' enmity toward Turks — in the closure case opened against a party that has won the support of half the population. Put yourself in their shoes for a second. Whoever they talk with in Turkey portrays others as a threat or at the very least voice their discomfort caused by the other. Alevis are fighting for legitimacy and are thereby concerned. Well, are the Sunnis in comfort? They are experiencing the same problem. Kurds are encountering problems vis-à-vis their identity and Turks fear being divided. Pious personnel in the military fear being expelled, whereas public servants who do not drink raki, an alcoholic beverage, fear not being given the promotion they deserve. Secularists view practicing Muslims as a threat, and headscarved citizens are marginalized while those who do not wear a headscarf are afraid that they may be forced to wear one.

In fact, former US Ambassador to Turkey Mark Parris, who delivered a speech at a panel discussion on Turkish-American relations in Washington sponsored by the Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen's Association (TÜSİAD) must have realized this situation. In response to a question on a closure case seeking to close the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) he said, "Well, these days I'm more concerned about what Turks have been doing to Turks."

The entire world is perplexed by the treatment to which Turks subject one another. No one is able to predict what the next step might bring. They ask questions like "Will the government be closed down?" or "What about the economy and the current account deficit?" Of course, we should exclude those who are familiar with the near history of our democracy, as they know that such things are very usual, that parties are closed down every now and then and that even the leaders of parties that received significant public support were hung in the past.

Considering all this, one on the one hand angrily questions why the United States is not reacting as strongly to this intervention in democracy as Europe, feels disturbed by it watching the process as if it were watching a football game even though the result of the case will profoundly impact many things with which it is deeply concerned, and asks, "Is it really that difficult to take sides with democracy?" But on the other hand, one thinks to oneself: If we harbor such a great degree of hatred of one another, what can the Americans or the Europeans do about it? If we cannot agree on the most fundamental principles of democracy, who can do anything about it? Furthermore, how smart is it to cause the economy as well as democracy to "capsize" and then to beg others for help? Will we ever be able to heal these internal wounds of ours that embarrass us in our relations with other nations?

However, a comment made on the closure case by an Algerian politician at this panel discussion — which I attended with a group of delegates to discuss whether the AK Party experience could constitute a paradigm for the Islamic world — showed that not only Westerners but also Muslims do not believe that we can solve this problem on our own. Abderrezzak Marki, a leader of the Society of Peace Movement, who began his speech by saying that his party has learned a lot from the AK Party's experience and that it encouraged them, stressed that a ruling in favor of closure would axe the democratization efforts in the region and benefit only al-Qaeda-type policies. He then called on the West to not allow such a development. It may be saddening and also contradictory to Turkey's strategic value and the role it is expected to play, but this is the picture we project in Washington.

I wish we were able to put everyone else aside and first focus on our efforts to make Turks friends with Turks…