Post-Truth: One talk, two events

Last weekend, the renowned philosopher and author Hilmi Yavuz gave an enlightening talk at the Tarihçi Bookstore on the social and political aspects of "Post-Truth," a concept that has been in the headlines for years, which I listened to with great interest. Let us recall: Post-Truth was chosen as the Word of the Year by the famous Oxford Dictionary in 2016. To be frank, I have found the term Post-Truth—or rather, the expression—very unpleasant since the day it first appeared on the market. In my opinion, what lies behind the word, or rather the phrase, is the act of making a lie more palatable through a bit of sleight of hand. However, let us also recall that religions, which have been the primary source of morality for humanity for thousands of years, have had a rather ambivalent relationship with lying. For example, in the Ten Commandments, the foundational document of Judeo-Christian morality, lying appears—according to some sources—only as the ninth commandment. Yet, according to others, there is no direct prohibition of lying in the Ten Commandments. The ninth commandment is essentially "Do not bear false witness against your neighbor," and the command "Do not lie" is an inference drawn from this. In our religion, lying is classified among the "major sins," but—to end this point without dragging it out—there are also situations in our religion where lying is considered mubah (permissible).

The part of Mr. Yavuz's talk that interested me the most was a grievance he expressed. The professor noted that the term Post-Truth has attracted a great deal of attention from the Western written and visual press and social media, but he lamented that the same term is not given much consideration here. There were many phenomena in our own lives that would fit the definition of Post-Truth, but our society, including our written and visual press, was following what was happening with remarks like "Was this going to happen to us too? Were we going to hear this as well?"—or rather, by simply complaining. The professor was both astonished and saddened by this situation. After his talk, I took the floor and summarized: "My dear professor, we have an Enlightenment history of only 100-150 years here. Truth has not yet become ours, so how can Post-Truth be ours?" Mr. Yavuz, with great maturity and a bit of patience, stated that what I said could be a valid thesis, which pleased me.

The first event in the title of my article is still in the formation stage, and I am watching it with my eyes occasionally drifting to the television. Trump is heading toward winning the US presidential election by a landslide. May Hilmi Yavuz's ears ring. In his talk, what he expected from our society—how the American public and press clearly state the lies Trump tells, even putting time units on them, and how they speak and write about the lies told to them—was what he wanted to see here. No, do not expect this from me. I will certainly not say, "Look at the American public, they are saying and writing it, but what does it change?" My self-respect prevents me from saying that from the start.

The second event of yesterday and today, from my perspective, is naturally far behind the US elections in terms of importance. However, I believe it is significant in terms of the relationship of my country's intellectuals with the truth in general, and because it relates to an event that has occupied me for roughly 20 years in particular. Prof. Ali Alpar, former president of the Science Academy Association, sent a note to all association members yesterday, announcing an article he wrote years after the publication of the book titled Turkey's Science Academy Exam - Boğaziçi Publications (2015) by former TÜBA (Turkish Academy of Sciences) president Prof. Engin Bermek (sarkaç.org). What concerns me directly in the article is the section on the Doğramacı-Yazıcı case. In this section, there is a grave misinterpretation of the commentary alongside a significant objective error.

Let me explain without going into the details: In 1998, as the TÜBA Scientific Ethics Committee, we had requested that TÜBA officially announce the Doğramacı-Spock plagiarism, which everyone actually knew well but was afraid to speak about, and which Uğur Mumcu had exposed years earlier. To summarize very briefly again, the TÜBA administration was afraid of Doğramacı and did not do so. Later, I disclosed the incident to the press. Doğramacı accused me of insulting him by calling him a plagiarist through the press and filed a lawsuit for non-pecuniary damages against me. During the trial, the TÜBA administration did not take much interest in the case. I lost the case and paid damages to Doğramacı. Later, I took the case to the European Court of Human Rights, and in 2014, the same court found the defamation lawsuit filed against me to be unjust and ruled that my country had wrongly sentenced me to pay damages. As a result, the compensation I paid to Doğramacı was reimbursed to me by my state (A Plagiarism, Hasan Yazıcı, İletişim Publications, 2nd Edition, 2024).

What is the significant error in Mr. Alpar's article? The European Court of Human Rights did not register Doğramacı's plagiarism. It only ruled that I could not be prevented from voicing the same plagiarism. In one part of its decision, it also expressed an opinion to the effect of, "However, we could not quite understand what the judiciary in Yazıcı's country calls plagiarism."

So, what is the misinterpretation I mentioned? In his article, after stating—thank you very much—that I carried out the struggle alone after losing hope in TÜBA during the trial process, Mr. Alpar describes the trial process in quite some detail and says exactly this: "This event created awareness in the public regarding science and publication ethics. Academic moral violations are still widespread at all levels in our university system. Many administrators ignore these events, and even commit them themselves."

I say there is a major Post-Truth phenomenon here. So, in my country, the primary responsibility for the gradual degeneration of scientific ethics lies not with the TÜBA of the time, which was "savvy" and positioned itself according to the situation, but with the place that voiced the truth. How so? Perhaps what happens to the one who voices the truth gives courage to those responsible for the degeneration. Why can we never think that if TÜBA had acted a little more properly in the incident in question, the degeneration that Mr. Alpar correctly observes could have been prevented, at least to some extent?