It was the state yesterday, and so it is today!

Nuray Mert

Nowadays I am preoccupied by the traffic accident I had last week. Since I had to rest, I read Hanefi Avcı’s book “Devotee Residents of Haliç: Yesterday State, Today Religious Community.”

Usually excerpts on the Fethullah Gülen Movement are being discussed. But Avcı mentions so many other things that happened in the recent past. So, they need be opened to discussion, too. First of all, we see Avcı goes through a political-personal self questioning and explains how he questioned, in time, being the “Hunter of the State” – his last name means Hunter in English. I believe his “sincerity”. Summary of his political self-questioning is included in a section titled “It was the state yesterday, but the [Gülen] community today”.
I object to this summary.

The issue is, I think, it was the state yesterday and so it is today, too! The deep, dark state is changing hands and being restructured. In the meantime, official ideology changes, too. The “threat” is changing. The “enemy” is changing. But unfortunately, the rest remains unchanged. That’s what is happening now.

We don’t like deep, dark secrets and want more law, more freedom, and more democracy. So, we all wish that we should have more democratic order and a state structure within as we change. Some of us see, or want to see, our wish as “real.” But I am not of the same opinion. I was fiercely criticized for not seeing the realization of our wish. I cannot say “Never mind, no harm” because harm is big!

And I am afraid that we will not be able to build a brighter future due to our efforts to settle the score with the past. This could be the biggest damage. When things get complicated, we quickly blame the community for everything. This is not the way. We should go through healthier self-questioning. The “devotees” (a metaphor Avcı uses in the book) are not the only problem and they have never been, not now even! The problem is everyone who resists smelling the odor of Haliç (another metaphor Avcı uses) and others who benefit from doing so.

Look how the perception of new threat/enemy/guilt is spread. Through the discourse of military tutelage/the Ergenekon crime gang, not only all dirty tricks of the recent past but also every piece of the old status quo are being cleared. Former putshers, intelligence officers and pro-tutelage architects of the dirty war in the Southeast can turn into “democrats” in this new order.

Those who applauded the Feb. 28 post-modern coup recently turned around and today say “We were threatened,” as though they are little kids, finding a way out of being held responsible.

Avcı’s statements on the Ergenekon case are extremely important. He is exerting efforts to show how wrong to claim that many different organizations, including the leftist-revolutionist Dev-Sol, Hezbollah, and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, are being controlled by a single center. He believes this is baseless nonsense. However, the important thing is not the base or logic, but how such discourses function! "Military tutelage” and Ergenekon, as the two key concepts today, are being used to legitimate a new restructuring, a big cleaning operation, not serious self-questioning. This is what I see, but I hope I am mistaken.

Nuray Mert is a columnist for daily Hürriyet, in which this piece first appeared. It was translated into English by the Daily News staff.

Published on Hurriyet Daily News on 7 October 2010, Thursday