Will Turkey become Iran?

Ömer Naci is famous for his oratory. But he is also a revolutionary, an Ittihadist (member of the Committee of Union and Progress). In 1907, while engaged in a mutual debate on certain literary topics in a magazine, he could not hold himself back: “But look, look with fairness, my dear friend. There are claws destroying humanity, tragedies that make consciences groan; there are hours when an entire history, glory, and honor are buried in the soil forever. Yes, while all these are expressing their pain silently and quietly, weeping without finding any help or consolation, what are you and I thinking about and defending as we stand face to face?”

With these lines drawing attention to the state of the country, he himself became a target. He fled before the day of the court where he would be dismissed from the military and sentenced to six months in prison. According to a report in an Ittihadist newspaper, in June 1907, “Ömer Naci Bey, one of the Ottoman military officers who gained a distinguished reputation with his self-sacrifice in the service of the Fatherland and his merit in literature, came to Thessaloniki from Paris and joined the Committee of Union and Progress.”

Before long, he reached Iran within a few months, conducting Ittihadist propaganda in every crowd he encountered, from steamships to mines. He had realized the dream of the Ittihadists a year earlier, in 1906, in Iran, which had declared its Constitution, its freedom, and opened its national assembly. To the Constitutional Iran, which was worthy of the appreciation of the Young Turks, deserving of their praise, and whose friendship they sought. Right across from Van, to Salmas, to Khoy.

Here, he first continued his revolutionary work as an educator. Just as he was about to cross into Anatolia, in June 1908, he fought to protect freedom in Iran after the Shah had the Iranian Parliament bombed. He did not see the freedom he awaited in the Ottoman Empire as separate from the protection of freedom in Iran. He was arrested, thrown into a dungeon, and a death sentence was issued. Fortunately, the declaration of freedom in the Ottoman Empire at this time allowed the government to pressure Iran and prevent his execution at the very last moment. Of course, he did not stop. He did not stop in Istanbul, where he arrived by giving revolutionary speeches in city after city. A few months later, he returned to Iran with a force to support the revolutionaries. Until freedom in the Ottoman Empire was endangered on March 31.

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In 1921, while the Grand National Assembly in Ankara had just accepted the Law of Fundamental Organization (Teşkilat-ı Esasiye) as a constitutional text and was preparing for the Second Battle of İnönü; in Iran, Reza Khan, with the support of the British, took power from the Qajar dynasty. He, and many Iranians, looked with envy at Turkey as the sultanate and caliphate were abolished and the republic was established. But there were many who found the republic too much for them, like the mullahs, like Iran's oil. And then there was the appetite for exploitation, and the money of England. Reza Khan eventually became Reza Shah.

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In the 1930s, Reza Shah began to admire Hitler. He tightened his relations with Germany. He began to use the name Iran, which means “land of the Aryan race,” as the country's name, banning the use of Fars/Pers/Persia. Faced with this trend, England, which wanted to maintain its hegemony in Iran, and the Soviets, who wanted to expand their influence, occupied Iran in 1941. They replaced Reza Shah with his son, Mohammad Reza.

In this new balance, the Tudeh Party was founded. As a communist party directly linked to the Soviets. At first, it became one of the dominant forces in the country, a few years later it was banned, and then it began to lose power. Meanwhile, the young Shah's engagement with the USA was increasing significantly. In the meantime, the National Front, which brought together different tendencies and focused on nationalizing Iranian oil, was gaining strength around Mohammad Mosaddegh. Mosaddegh became prime minister in 1951 but was overthrown in 1953 by a CIA-backed operation.

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After the overthrow of Mosaddegh, the Shah consolidated his power further with the backing of the USA. He established SAVAK, which operated like an intelligence organization that was an extension of the CIA in Iran. He created an environment of great oppression. By the 1960s, although he appeared to be taking steps toward democratization, prosecutions, arrests, torture, and unsolved murders never ended; the gallows were never removed.

There was a stronger spirit of solidarity in the world back then. Back then, there were many who did not build their own dreams of a beautiful future separately from those of others. While the gallows were waiting for students who opposed the Shah this time, in 1965, Doğan Avcıoğlu made an invitation: “If, at the moment these lines are published, the patriotic Iranian intellectuals are still alive, Turkish intellectuals must also join the worldwide struggle initiated for their rescue.”

Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca joined this invitation with his verses: “Are they the hands of Parviz, the hands of his thirteen comrades, my dear, the hands of Zal-oglu Rustam/The stars are swaying/ A power is working on a huge salvation/ This is Iran, if you love it, stay a while/ Every darkness has become a bit of a Shahnameh.”

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Mosaddegh followed all these events from his home, while under house arrest, as much as he could, until his death in 1967. Muammer Aksoy felt the need to remind people of Mosaddegh—whom he called “an honest Iranian patriot of good will who wanted to do great things for his nation, at least in the beginning, and did so to a certain extent, but later could not show the necessary courage and skill”—how he was overthrown, and the Shah's relationship with the USA and the CIA, immediately after his passing.

He added at one point: “There is no patriot who would not accept that a person who desires to overthrow even the worst government by cooperating with the interests of foreign states is one of the most despicable creatures.”

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The Turk is an “other” in the Shahnameh. In this epic based on legends, which is one of the most important sources of Iranian identity. But this source is in such a basin that the Turk is also nourished by this basin, and the day comes when it bears fruit for the world.

Nazım Hikmet writes the play of Ferhat and Shirin. And it is published in Persian in Iran, a few years after his death, with his own profile drawing on the cover. While complaints about the administration of our country continued with sentences like “Even in the fascist regime of the Shah of Iran...”. While Dağlarca had just reached out to Iranian revolutionaries with a poem. While Çetin Altan was being attacked in Parliament for saying “Nazım Hikmet is the greatest Turkish poet.” While the Iranian Students Union in France was among those sending protest telegrams to Parliament due to what happened to Altan.

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It is probably no coincidence! A few months after Mosaddegh died, the Shah found his title too simple and wanted a crown. He was crowned with a great imperial ceremony and declared himself Shahanshah, King of Kings. With his Empress, Farah Pahlavi, he became one of the most important gossip materials for world society. In 1971, he celebrated the 2500th anniversary of the Persian Empire, carrying out one of the most expensive state ceremonies of the modern age. While his people were dying of poverty and hunger.

While the Turkish-Islamic synthesis project was being implemented in Turkey. Partly for this reason, the 900th anniversary of the Battle of Manzikert was celebrated much more specially. While the curses of “may you melt away” read for Nihat Erim accompanied some young Turkish revolutionaries fighting against Israel in the ranks of Palestine.

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The pot began to boil in 1976. In Iran, the anti-Shah movement reached a point where every segment could not be ignored. The religious movement, nationalists, communists divided into various pieces, especially the Tudeh... It gained great momentum in 1978. They began to shake the throne.

The pot began to boil in 1976. In Turkey, the anti-imperialist movement gained the strength to hold a mass May 1st celebration in Taksim Square for the first time. It gained great momentum until 1978. But they had started the 1970s round by shaking. They now had new “imperialisms”: Soviet imperialism, Chinese imperialism. Soviet-leaning, Maoist. They started fighting among themselves. The May 1st that gave hope in 1976 had become bloody in 1977.

While supporting the anti-Shah movement in Iran from Turkey, they acted according to their own imperialism preferences: Some supported the Tudeh, some the Fedayeen, some the Tufanis. One said, let Demirel and the Shah oppose both superpowers—America and the Soviets—and let us support them too. Many said that Khomeini, the leading name of the opposition, a clergyman, was not someone who would take Iran back to the darkness of the Middle Ages as claimed...

Until Khomeini, who took power after overthrowing the Shah in 1979, liquidated the other opposition forces. In 1979, while Dağlarca's lines “your face has appeared from the past to the future” and Zülfü Livaneli's words “the honorable rose of the East” continued to echo.

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Imperialism—let me state it too—American imperialism, seeing that the Soviets were entering a process where they could not compete with it, drew a new route in the mid-1970s: neoliberalism. A world where everything is bought and sold, where everything related to humans is put on the market. The world we are in.

The September 12 coup fell upon Turkey's fate. The route drawn required the liquidation of the forces that would resist imperialism. The destruction of the heritage of the Enlightenment. It was the fate of Kenan Evren, who would later paint nude pictures, to use the holy book in squares to gather votes. At the same time, while saying Atatürk, to wipe out whatever remained of his legacy that placed reason at the center. While letting the camel escape, to pave the way for a system that makes us—if excused—busy chasing fleas with identity politics.

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Muammer Aksoy is an “other” when viewed from the darkness. When viewed from the darkness of the Middle Ages. When viewed from the darkness of modern and post-modern times. He had founded the Association for Kemalist Thought (ADD), against Atatürk, whose body Evren tried to imprison in busts and whose spirit he tried to destroy. Against those who look at the shadow of the mountain and see the silhouette of Atatürk. So that Turkey remains Turkey. The following year, in 1990, he was murdered by an organization linked to the Iranian regime. Then Bahriye Üçok, Uğur Mumcu, Ahmet Taner Kışlalı...

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As reason, along with intellectuals, was violently attacked during these years, the question “Will Turkey become Iran?” began to be asked frequently with anxiety. As the intensity of the attack increased, the question remained current for years. Today it is being asked again, but mostly with a different curiosity: “Will Turkey become Iran?” Will Turkey be the target after Iran?

Some look at what is happening as a live “reality” show that accompanies their tea after iftar, as long as Turkey is not a military target, and if it doesn't cause too much damage to the economy they foresee. They cannot say imperialism. They say, “the snake that doesn't touch me.”

Let us ask like Ömer Naci. With his tone that emphasizes how meaningless secondary issues are when vital problems are at hand: Truly, what are we thinking about and what are we defending, my dear friend? There is no water left that the snake has not mixed its poison into. We have been poisoned by this water we have been drinking for a long time, and we are dying sometimes one by one, sometimes collectively, but we cannot pass the cause of our death into the records of the new age.

Turkey will become Iran! Unless Iran—which we envy, envy, are nourished by, struggle side by side with, show solidarity with, see as a rival, turn our noses up at, and fear being drawn into its darkness when the time comes; which is not just about the Shah or the Ayatollah—remains Iran. Unless the Iranian people uphold the dignity of humanity. When we side with the despicable creatures that Muammer Aksoy mentioned.