Halil Berktay
The Turkish original of this article was published as Yemekten sonra on 22nd January 2016.
[22 January 2016] Yes indeed, yesterday, i.e. on 21st January, I did take part at a President’s Table affair in the Beştepe Complex in Ankara. Right away, President Erdoğan made some welcoming and introductory remarks for no more than three or four minutes. For the next three hours, he only listened, without responding to anyone or engaging in debate; only at the end, when he thanked everyone, did he set out some of his own views. This too was quite brief. In between, he concentrated only on taking extensive notes all the time.
At some point (I believe third from last) I also spoke for maybe twenty minutes or so. My main points [including some additions that I have indicated in square brackets] were the following: (1) Given world events, and the Middle Eastern situation in particular, all the violence originating with the PKK and IS in and around Turkey is not likely to come to a quick end. For quite some time, we are going to have to live side by side with all such incidents, with acts of terror, and with war and death in our midst.
(2) I am not capable of suggesting this or that final solution to any of these [just as, for the Armenian question, too, I’ve said for years that I don’t know where and how any eventual solution might come, and neither am I very much interested in it]. What holds my attention is the process itself. I keep worrying about what the outlook and inner life of Turkish society has to be.
(3) A common formula in this regard is that “the struggle against terrorism should not cause any harm to freedom, democracy, and the state of law.” This sounds rather lame. I believe that freedom and democracy should be regarded not as a passive and derivative package which may or may not be protected against any damage, but as an active element, our very being, our main asset and resource.
(4) A major part of this should be to refrain from heightening or contributing to the tension felt by society. [Inevitably, we are being stretched tight anyway. But especially the AKP leadership should take extra care not to transmit this tension to politics, however difficult it might be. Despite all the war and terror, society must be enabled to carry on its moderate existence. The middle ground should not be crushed and destroyed between conflicting extremes. The public sphere should not be flooded with harsh, acrimonious and damning discourses.]
(5) The AKP, including the government and the presidency [or for that matter any other party that might come to power], cannot wage this struggle purely on the basis of its own “crack troops,” i.e. its own core reserves of power. It needs the broadest alliances possible, by which I mean not only inter-party alliances in the narrow political sense, but more informal social alliances which combine and overlap knot by knot to cover all of civic society,
(6) The other side of the coin has to do with narrowing the target. It is crucial for the government and the presidency to keep their targets as small and narrow as possible, or to put it the other way round, not to keep widening the target [not to be sidetracked by passing events into opening new fronts] [on the ground that so-and-so might be the ally of the ally of my opponent]. Ways should be find to minimize and not maximize various epi-phenomena.
(6a) A case in point is the current over-reaction to the statement signed by 1128 academics. I have already said as much in my own articles. Politically, I am wholly against what it says. Previously, roughly around the time of Angela Merkel’s visit, there were also a few statements of this sort, though with far fewer signatures. Their virtually sole purpose, too, was to register a complaint against Turkey with the international public in order to somehow invite foreign intervention. At the time [in various articles and interviews over 20-23 October 2015], I said that this amounted to a new advocacy of putting Turkey under an international mandate. I firmly stand by this verdict of mine. It has been noted here [by other speakers before me] that now it has evolved into a much more systematic accusation of genocide [implying that what was done to the Armenians in 1915 is now being done to the Kurds, thereby trying to set the security forces’ struggle against the PKK’s armed urban occupations into this ready-made template]. This is a travesty of the truth; people are either lying or lending themselves to a lie instruments to a lie.
(6b) Up to here, we are in agreement. But from here on, we are not in agreement when it is alleged that signing this statement constitutes a crime; when the police, public prosecutors, and the Board of Higher Education begin launching administrative or even juridical procedures against the signatories; and when political leaders directly call for such measures; no, over all this we are diametrically opposed. [This is also true for attempts to jump from the signatories’ erroneous political ideas to defaming them on the grounds that in sheer academic, scholarly terms they are worthless, to which I can attest the contrary for those that I happen to know in person.] First, as bad, wrong or disinformative as it may be, there is no crime involved. [Indeed, once all the dust settles down, I think it will become clear that as far as criminal justice is concerned, nothing can or will be done in this regard.] At the end of the day, is this statement covered by the principle of the freedom of thought and of academic freedom? Of course it is. Therefore second, what has been the outcome of taking things down this side-track for the government? The whole question has been enormously blow up out of all proportion; it has been maximized rather than minimized; a new front has been opened; freedom of thought has gained precedence over crticizing the original statement’s contents; Turkey and the government have had to absorb some damage. I think it would be useful to move from this example in spending some thought on[past, present and future] errors of target-enlargement.
(7) In conclusion, I would also like to connect all this with a problematic of pursuing a “narrow” versus a “broad” political line. There is, of course, this question of the party or government “line” in politics. [Parties, governments or ruling establishments may have a general line as well as special lines for a number of issues, though here I am more concerned with the general line.] Will the AK Party henceforth follow a “narrow” or a “broad” line? [Suppose you want to narrow down your target and build the widest possible alliances against it.] From your own end, are you going to adopt only a few basic criteria to differentiate between friend and foe, and thus proceed from a “broad” line to embrace as many as possible? In that case, it will be easier for people to stand by peace and democratic legitimacy. Or will you be extremely picky [slicing the ham as thinly as possible] by constantly adding to the friendship criteria [and heightening tension on this basis], hence making it increasingly more difficult for people who cannot conform to the “narrow” line — now specified by all these extra criteria — to stand by peace and stability?
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At the table I also mentioned some other examples, but I will not go into them for the time being. This is more or less what I said, or what I wanted to say or what I think I said, give or take a ten percent error margin. In any case, even if it had not been for the president’s invitation, I was meaning to write a series of articles on such issues for Serbestiyet. What I actually said was like a synopsis of those drafts. Now, perhaps for a week or more, I am going to try to present all these ideas in more detail.