‘The New Turkey’ Anxiety

This is not about to listen to, or understand, what Davutoğlu says. This is about defining and positioning a speculative “other”, the AK Party.

Open Democracy (OD), a public service on the web, published Richard Falk’s interview with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. In addition, the OD Editor Mary Fitzgerald penned down a piece saying that they posted the interview although they found it quite “problematic” and “irritating”. The OD preferred to frame Davutoğlu’s not commenting on the Gezi incidents in the interview, within a remnant photograph of “a woman in shock and awe gazing back in a cab” during the incidents. Beside this, Editor Fitzgerald attached a note saying that there was much internal debate at the OD about whether or not to publish the interview, but since the interviewer was Mr. Falk, the site decided to run it through for the sake of the OD’s understanding of “pluralism”. As if that was not enough, however, OD made sure that various articles raising counter-arguments were published on the same day as rebuttals to Davutoğlu’s interview.

The articles, most of which were written by “experts” on Turkey, although touching upon the main points of Davutoğlu’s interview, emphasized that it was a mistake to publish this interview and that the OD had become a tool for the Turkish government’s “propaganda”; some even put blame on Falk.

Why was there an attempt to portray an interview with a democratically elected Prime Minister of a government as “illegitimate”? Why was the top official of the Turkish government, who naturally elucidated the developments in Turkey from the government’s perspective, rebutted by multiple articles the total length of which exceeded the space allocated to the interview itself? More importantly, however, what was it precisely that made Davutoğlu’s interview “alarming” for these “experts”? Yet another question is this: On a platform dubbed as “open democracy”, why is one who is critical of “intolerance towards criticism”, so extremely “disturbed” by the publication of such an interview?

THE ‘SCENARIO FOR TURKEY’

Of course, it is difficult to find satisfying answers to these questions. For that matter, historical analogies put together so as to build a common argument for “authoritarianism” are not of the kind that can be taken seriously. In fact, trying to build up a “Discourse on Turkey” based on a series of exaggerated historical analogies and photographs from Khomeini to Ceausescu, carries the intent to put into circulation a certain premeditated “story-telling” rather than an effort “to understand Turkey”. This “Scenario for Turkey”, however, is full of contradictions as well.

Many of the criticisms are simply efforts to paint as “’illegitimate” as a whole the existence of the Government of Turkey and its policies. More importantly, the attitudes of the critics, both in social and traditional media, are extremely biased. They market their own anti-government stance as “ethical”, but label others who criticize their position as “pro-government” and “unethical”.

This way, every kind of criticism towards the government is reflected as “a fact by itself” rather than as “a product of a certain stand”. Eventually, each criticism becomes an integral part of “an opposition front” by a continuously self-feeding “cycle of criticism”. Of course, my purpose is not to claim that all of the criticisms made in these counter arguments are far-fetched or illicit. But it is a fact that this “opposition front” that I have summarized briefly, is trying to write up a “Turkey Scenario”, and thereby lock Turkey up in the category of “the others”.

INAPT CLICHÉS

To put it more openly, this is not about to listen to, or understand, what Davutoğlu says. This is about defining and po

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