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WHICH 'PEOPLE'S WILL'? THE ONE IN THE SQUARES OR THE ONE IN THE BALLOT BOX?
By Bulent Kenes
Today's Zaman
Feb 4 2008
Turkey
Apparently we will be discussing the headscarf issue for many more
weeks, and each coming day will likely be more tense than the last.
However, we shouldn't feel out of place because it doesn't seem
possible for a certain segment of society that has been democratically
and demographically marginalized to abandon its old abits. This segment
is now satisfying its need for power with primitive bans like the
one against the headscarf, a ban that has been victimizing hundreds
of thousands of our citizens and irritating many more millions of them.
It is for this reason that even the most ordinary human right or the
simplest issue of freedom is turned by this segment of society into
a matter of survival that will result in great victories or defeats.
Maybe we should welcome as natural the great and devastating ruckus
created by this marginal and psychologically troubled segment of
society against steps taken for a democratic solution to the headscarf
problem that are far from being satisfactory.
To put it in plain language, being reduced to the most abject despair
to the point of hoping for help from bans in an attempt to perpetuate
the feeling of a never-deserved power is something we should pity.
Even more pitiful is that this segment of society has gotten bitterly
carried away with its minority psychology, looking down on its own
people and continuously fighting whatever this nation holds as a
value. There are more dangerous ones among them. They are turning
the teachings of democracy, secularism and modernism upside down to
disregard the needs and expectations of an overwhelming majority of
people, to frustrate even the smallest step taken to establish rights
and freedoms and to further consolidate these archaic bans. They
constitute the greatest obstacle before Turkey's establishment of
democracy and real secularism.
Just like the aristocrats of the mediaeval ages who had privileged
powers, these people we are talking about representing the class of
"secularity" that has long been melting in Turkey. It is nobody
but them who have been turning secularism into an instrument of
pressure and tyranny by stripping it of its universal qualities --
whereas it is the real antidote to pressure and tyranny. This segment,
which perceives and has been practicing secularism as a repressive
ideology meant to obliterate freedom, has lost its sanity to the point
of labeling the natural consequences of democracy in its universal
meaning in this country as "the dictatorship of the majority."
Moreover, they perpetrate this labeling contrary to the positive
perceptions of our religious minorities. While the Armenian, Jewish
and Greek minorities, with whom we live on this soil together, have
expressed their satisfaction with last year's election results, it
is really significant that a group of Turks has started to feel like
a minority based on the results of the July 22, 2007 elections.
This segment of society, which has been trying in vain to perpetuate
this ban despite the demands for freedom made by the majority, has
the temerity to distort the meanings of political terms. On the
one hand, this segment doesn't shy away from staging any sort of
provocation to prevent the steps being taken to remove this ban,
and on the other, they defend that a national consensus should be
sought for the revocation of this ban. However, they are deadly
afraid of even the possibility of a referendum, the only tool that
will demonstrate whether there is a national consensus on the removal
of the ban. Nowadays, they keep saying that "holding a referendum on
an issue of freedom is very dangerous."
In the meantime, they fail to see important realities. First of
all, they are trying to hide the fact that if a referendum is ever
conducted, it will be held to remove this fascist ban that has been
encroaching upon young women's right to higher education for years
and not to limit a right. What they actually want to do is really
simple: They see perfectly that it is now impossible to perpetuate
their repressive mindset through democratic methods now that they
have been reduced to a marginal minority. The will of people scares
them to death. Despite this, they are still able to create a serious
amount of tension -- and even terror -- as they have acquired deep
roots in the bureaucracy, universities, the military, the judiciary,
civil society and the media, in which their representational power
is at least five times the actual number of people who support them.
Today they are relying on the organized pandemonium created by
artificial crowds formed to be the representative of this repressive
mindset, as if the "republican rallies" of disgruntled people attained
their goal, rallies where they otherized all those who are not like
them and where they abused national values, such as the Turkish flag
and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. However, strangely enough, those who fill
the squares fail to fill the ballot boxes. The greater the noise they
produce in the squares, the greater their defeat in the ballot box
turns out. Therefore, those who depend on the supposed "power of the
people" in the squares are scared to death by the real manifestation
of the people's will: the ballot box. They try to conceal this great
fear by downplaying the people's will, issuing all sorts of joint
statements and holding organized rallies that might be of help in
debilitating the legislative faculty of Parliament.
Unfortunately, they have been unable to understand that they will
get nowhere by fighting the values of this country. They also don't
want to see that this country, which has an overwhelmingly Muslim
population, has no problems with the true form of secularism that
has universal values and wants to become a real democracy, with all
its institutions and principles. Well, who does their reluctance harm?
Only themselves. They doom themselves to bigotry in the name
of secularism, primitiveness in the name of modernism and to
anti-democracy and even fascism in the name of elitism. They are
doing themselves, as well as this country, an injustice. It's such
a great pity!
By Bulent Kenes
Today's Zaman
Feb 4 2008
Turkey
Apparently we will be discussing the headscarf issue for many more
weeks, and each coming day will likely be more tense than the last.
However, we shouldn't feel out of place because it doesn't seem
possible for a certain segment of society that has been democratically
and demographically marginalized to abandon its old abits. This segment
is now satisfying its need for power with primitive bans like the
one against the headscarf, a ban that has been victimizing hundreds
of thousands of our citizens and irritating many more millions of them.
It is for this reason that even the most ordinary human right or the
simplest issue of freedom is turned by this segment of society into
a matter of survival that will result in great victories or defeats.
Maybe we should welcome as natural the great and devastating ruckus
created by this marginal and psychologically troubled segment of
society against steps taken for a democratic solution to the headscarf
problem that are far from being satisfactory.
To put it in plain language, being reduced to the most abject despair
to the point of hoping for help from bans in an attempt to perpetuate
the feeling of a never-deserved power is something we should pity.
Even more pitiful is that this segment of society has gotten bitterly
carried away with its minority psychology, looking down on its own
people and continuously fighting whatever this nation holds as a
value. There are more dangerous ones among them. They are turning
the teachings of democracy, secularism and modernism upside down to
disregard the needs and expectations of an overwhelming majority of
people, to frustrate even the smallest step taken to establish rights
and freedoms and to further consolidate these archaic bans. They
constitute the greatest obstacle before Turkey's establishment of
democracy and real secularism.
Just like the aristocrats of the mediaeval ages who had privileged
powers, these people we are talking about representing the class of
"secularity" that has long been melting in Turkey. It is nobody
but them who have been turning secularism into an instrument of
pressure and tyranny by stripping it of its universal qualities --
whereas it is the real antidote to pressure and tyranny. This segment,
which perceives and has been practicing secularism as a repressive
ideology meant to obliterate freedom, has lost its sanity to the point
of labeling the natural consequences of democracy in its universal
meaning in this country as "the dictatorship of the majority."
Moreover, they perpetrate this labeling contrary to the positive
perceptions of our religious minorities. While the Armenian, Jewish
and Greek minorities, with whom we live on this soil together, have
expressed their satisfaction with last year's election results, it
is really significant that a group of Turks has started to feel like
a minority based on the results of the July 22, 2007 elections.
This segment of society, which has been trying in vain to perpetuate
this ban despite the demands for freedom made by the majority, has
the temerity to distort the meanings of political terms. On the
one hand, this segment doesn't shy away from staging any sort of
provocation to prevent the steps being taken to remove this ban,
and on the other, they defend that a national consensus should be
sought for the revocation of this ban. However, they are deadly
afraid of even the possibility of a referendum, the only tool that
will demonstrate whether there is a national consensus on the removal
of the ban. Nowadays, they keep saying that "holding a referendum on
an issue of freedom is very dangerous."
In the meantime, they fail to see important realities. First of
all, they are trying to hide the fact that if a referendum is ever
conducted, it will be held to remove this fascist ban that has been
encroaching upon young women's right to higher education for years
and not to limit a right. What they actually want to do is really
simple: They see perfectly that it is now impossible to perpetuate
their repressive mindset through democratic methods now that they
have been reduced to a marginal minority. The will of people scares
them to death. Despite this, they are still able to create a serious
amount of tension -- and even terror -- as they have acquired deep
roots in the bureaucracy, universities, the military, the judiciary,
civil society and the media, in which their representational power
is at least five times the actual number of people who support them.
Today they are relying on the organized pandemonium created by
artificial crowds formed to be the representative of this repressive
mindset, as if the "republican rallies" of disgruntled people attained
their goal, rallies where they otherized all those who are not like
them and where they abused national values, such as the Turkish flag
and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. However, strangely enough, those who fill
the squares fail to fill the ballot boxes. The greater the noise they
produce in the squares, the greater their defeat in the ballot box
turns out. Therefore, those who depend on the supposed "power of the
people" in the squares are scared to death by the real manifestation
of the people's will: the ballot box. They try to conceal this great
fear by downplaying the people's will, issuing all sorts of joint
statements and holding organized rallies that might be of help in
debilitating the legislative faculty of Parliament.
Unfortunately, they have been unable to understand that they will
get nowhere by fighting the values of this country. They also don't
want to see that this country, which has an overwhelmingly Muslim
population, has no problems with the true form of secularism that
has universal values and wants to become a real democracy, with all
its institutions and principles. Well, who does their reluctance harm?
Only themselves. They doom themselves to bigotry in the name
of secularism, primitiveness in the name of modernism and to
anti-democracy and even fascism in the name of elitism. They are
doing themselves, as well as this country, an injustice. It's such
a great pity!