Returning from vacation

As I promised in my article titled “May 1st is Not a Holiday” on Wednesday, May 1st, I am meeting with my valued readers again on May 29th with this piece. While a one-month break could be considered an opportunity for rest, for me, this interval was more of a chance to alleviate longing than a vacation. To explain, I had to step away from my readers to celebrate the university graduations of my twin grandchildren. 

The conditions in our country are reflected differently across various layers of society. The uncertainty and negative conditions into which unstable policies have dragged our country have led to fragmentation in my family, just as they have in many others. Since my grandchildren were born in a foreign country and had to complete their education there, the graduation program I attended created a mix of sadness and joy within me.        

In the founding years of the Republic, efforts were made to create a very valuable human resource by sending students abroad. It is painful to see that while we boast about a 600-year-old empire, when that empire collapsed and a new state was established in its place, we realized that the foreign countries we once prided ourselves on conquering had been working and producing human potential. Upon waking up to this reality, we began sending our youth there to benefit, even if only slightly, from their human development resources. Unfortunately, this situation is continuing at full speed, but this time it is not happening in the form of intentional sending, but in the form of an exodus from the country. When our biggest export product becomes qualified human capital, the ratio of technology-intensive products within our exports cannot be raised to the desired level. What I mean is that our stubbornness in pushing our qualified youth abroad as a result of our meaningless and low-quality political policies also ensures the continuation of our stubbornness in exporting low-quality products. Who are we being stubborn against, and for what reason, with these policies! 

The term "survival issue" (beka sorunu) is constantly on the lips of the ruling front. Well, if the survival issue is about the country, how is it that our youth, our doctors, and our trained personnel are going abroad, fleeing? Then, we must think about whose issue this survival problem, which is constantly mentioned, really is. It seems to me that the survival issue is not about the country, but about the political cadre that has been governing the country for over twenty years and has dragged it into today's miserable state. It is precisely because the country has been brought to this heartbreaking state over the last twenty years that the ruling political cadre finds it necessary to remain in power to avoid accountability. The erosion of the legal system and the attempts to destroy the country's fundamental pillars are aimed less at creating a new nation and more at preventing the political cadre from being held to account.

The last two disheartening actions of the cadre that has held power for over twenty years are being used so skillfully, as if to mask one another, that one wonders whether to grieve for the slaughter of our youth through a reactionary education program, or to be saddened by the fact that our animal friends, who are said to be "put to sleep," are being sent into a deep sleep from which they will never wake up! In fact, both are political operations applied to different beings and through different processes by the same fabric or formation. Putting dogs to sleep is analogous to numbing the brains of the youth. The political power, which treats education not as a process of enlightenment but, on the contrary, as a process of "veiling" the brain, is cutting the country's jugular vein. Do you think the political power is unable to notice this situation? 

So, why does the political cadre deem such cruelty worthy of our country? This issue can only be clarified and thus understood within the big picture. Capitalism, which is experiencing a global crisis and has no possibility of emerging from it, must extract resources from peripheral countries like Turkey while concentrating wealth at the center. To this end, central powers assign certain missions to the politicians of peripheral economies. In this context, the most effective process is to erode the mental and intellectual capacities of the peoples of countries under intense exploitation, turning the country's population into robots like toy soldiers. The tool for dragging peoples into captivity is impoverishment, and the tool for robotization is education in its general sense. Education is a matter of discipline, but the desired discipline in education is not related to scholastic-rote learning, but to critical education open to analysis and interpretation. Thus, the "imam-hatip-ization" of education and the top-down education program being forced into the system are aimed at creating not critical individuals, but individuals who obey orders and act dogmatically without thinking, through such a scholastic-rote education system devoid of philosophy. 

Well, if such a project is intended, how does this serve the purpose of the imperialist? Today, production networks have come to encompass all relevant countries. For example, a computer or a passenger car is produced and brought to market by bringing together parts produced in different countries. While the value of the product is recorded in the income accounts of different countries, the shares of the countries are shaped according to the value that the product parts contribute to the product. The highest share in production is created/taken by technology, which is built through science. The value of a product increases with technology. Therefore, countries that master science and produce technology receive a higher share of the total value. In short, central countries participate in the global economy and can only have a share to this extent by producing technology, while peripheral countries do so by engaging in production and/or repair and maintenance work in accordance with the assigned project. This is the way they are lined up in the global production chain. Then, education is shaped accordingly in both central and peripheral countries. 

It was with such thoughts and a heavy heart that I was away from you for a month, but being together with you, my valued readers, has made me happy once again.