Protectionist Ideology in Turkey and Its Cheap, Polarizing Bloggers Abroad

Muhammed Çetin

When a conflict arises in society, adherents of any ideology will use it to their own advantage. One way they do this is by pushing groups outside the conflict to be involved in it.

They attempt to make their adversary's position seem illegitimate and negative in the eyes of third parties. Protectionist groups in the Turkish system use all these tactics to discredit opponents, legitimize repression and mask unlawful schemes. Their easiest route to that end has been to control the media, including recently using deceitful bloggers outside Turkey.

The protectionists in Turkey prefer to isolate the nation from world realities so it will be easier for them to impose their authority on it. They are not recognized for their contribution to any international achievement, but they counter-mobilize against others who are. They are attempting to retain their status in Turkey and the international arena as the single voice of the Turkish people.

So, any analysis of Turkey that does not take into account the limits imposed by these ideologically oriented interest groups becomes an apology for the existing situation, for corruption in the status quo and for radicalization. The parliamentary and presidential elections in 2007 and the ongoing Ergenekon (Turkish Gladio) investigations have shown clearly how protectionist groups — in decline in the political system and with an interest in keeping it closed — react predictably by resisting the intended outcomes and counter-mobilizing against civil society; in this case, against the Gülen movement. Now they are using marginal individual blogs with absurd allegations against cultural ventures and educational services.

The protectionist groups have proven incapable of bridging the rifts modernization generates, which the discourse and services of the Gülen movement are capable of bridging. The marginalized political elite cannot keep abreast of the changing terms of social, economic and political realities in Turkey. Their thinking has resulted in exclusivist ideological readings of reality, dogmatism, separatism, plots, violence, coups and killings. So now they are turning to individual bloggers abroad to misinform non-Turkish people and rectify their loss of status with non-Turkish people.

The statist, elitist, leftist and Jacobin laicists have failed to deliver an alternative point of view or make such a view practicable. They were unable to produce a political plan with instruments and models of transformation suitable to the historical, economic and social context. Their actions at the systemic level did not enable cultural innovation or institutional modernization. That inability has now reduced them to a marginalized "opposition" in Parliament and an oligarchical-minority voice in wider society. Their intellectual sterility and lack of supporting social-economic groups has decayed into a counter-mobilization against all except themselves. This has become a source of polarization, segmentation and tensions, as well as social, moral, political and economic crises in Turkey — seen in the assassinations of Dink, other journalists and judges, and in Susurluk, Şemdinli and Ergenekon.

Their counter-mobilization is especially targeted on religion, religious people and all modernizing efforts and projects originating from civic and faith-inspired communities. That is the context of killing journalists and judges and making faith-inspired communities and elected governments their major "adversaries" or "coup targets." Their tentacles outside Turkey are individual, self-referential bloggers who have remained intellectually stuck and produced absurd allegations in a culture of enmity that could polar­ize not only Turks but all peoples.

Everyone knows Gülen preaches tolerance and goodwill. He has always encouraged dialogue, mutual respect and understanding. That is why he has met with social and religious leaders and sowed the seeds of inter-religious dialogue in Turkey and abroad. Many top state authorities, internationally recognized media outlets and academics — Turkish and non-Turkish alike — have spoken of their admiration for the schools and institutions that the Gülen movement has established across Turkey and the world. These non-political, secular and peaceful institutions contribute to the cultures and wellbeing of Turkey and other countries. Their success in weakening or removing barriers between people has received recognition and enabled even those who have no part in the movement's work to reflect on the irrational polarization and rigid separation between different collective entities in Turkish society and different countries abroad. Recent allegations are in the service of a private cause, not the common good.

They do not recognize other legitimate groupings in society. Without mutual recognition between different groups, there can only be oppression and repression, emptying the social field of meaning and destroying the potential for positive, fruitful interactions. This indicates a failure of political (as well as moral) imagination and a readiness to conceive difference only in terms of conflict. The harm in this attitude lies in the tendency toward conflict and transgressing the system's shared "rules of engagement." The recent groundless accusations by bloggers are merely an example of this. In these attacks the movement's opponents, hiding behind the bloggers' coverage, have sought to create a distorted picture of the Gülen movement's motives and actions. This cheap collaboration produces nothing substantial, only groundless and dishonest lies.

Published on Today's Zaman, 17 July 2008, Thursday