The warnings and blessings of war

For nations, war is death for individuals. These are two intertwined conceptual approaches; in the first dimension, the state of war for nations can be perceived analogously to death for individuals, and in the second dimension, a similarity can be seen between the meaning of war for nations and the meaning of death for individuals. Let us unpack these conceptual approaches and take a look at where they might lead or cast us.

First, let us take a brief look at the meaning and effects of the two concepts, war and death, on nations and individuals with short explanations. Neither do nations openly desire war and wait for it with enthusiasm, nor do individuals desire death and wait for it with enthusiasm. In other words, nations see war, and individuals see death, as being so far away that it will never happen, no matter how close they may actually be. However, while nations' background organizational departments always take war into account and make preparations accordingly, the scent/anxiety of death is always present in the subconscious or unconscious world of individuals; yet, unlike nations, individuals do not act upon it and immediately return to daily life as if fleeing from anxiety or fear. Taking care not to be misled by this superficial difference between the individual subject and the social subject, I wanted to say a few words in this week's article about the Middle East war and the situation of our country under current conditions.

We can liken the arrival of war at our doorstep to an aging person withdrawing from the blessings of the world and beginning to make preparations. Just as nations are not prepared for war when they do not think about and/or foresee it, individuals who do not think about death cannot be prepared for the inevitable end as they approach the final stage of life. However, when the crunch time comes, both subjects begin their final preparations, reminiscent of the expression, "if the time has come to weigh anchor from this port." The political cadre, which remained quite calm even while the drums of war were beating in the Middle East, and not content with just remaining calm, did everything in its power for the sake of its institutional/ideological survival, began to turn to and cling to the rhetoric of "strengthening the internal front" as the war intensified. As if stating the obvious, it seems we have serious concerns about the internal front! How could we not, when discrimination and social division in the sociological sphere, the rich-poor divide in the economic sphere, and the rejection of the opposition and single-party/single-man rule in the political sphere are dominant; I do not know how the internal front will be fortified! If the acceleration of war is giving us such warnings, I wish we did not have such concerns, or rather, that a serious management approach had not displayed actions that would cast the nation into anxieties that could lead to such sudden concerns. On this side of the matter, the general outlook is, unfortunately, like this!

If we turn to the other side of the matter, the issue of the public's food security immediately confronts us. Years of neglect in the fields of agriculture and animal husbandry and the wrong policies implemented are at a level that could leave our people in a serious predicament should a serious situation occur tomorrow. I have expressed this at every opportunity; due to land conditions, the cost of rice production in Japan is above world markets. However, despite this situation, in the event of a war and blockade, the Japanese government has never resorted to rice imports in a way that would undermine national production, even for the sake of the survival of the political ruling cadre. So, what did we do! We undermined agriculture in our country, which was once a grain silo, with agricultural support projects; we almost killed animal husbandry in a way that could lead to importing animals for slaughter during the Feast of Sacrifice; and by shamelessly and without any political concern turning to meat imports from companies established in foreign countries by some politically connected individuals, we chose to favor both the seller and the importer at the expense of the public's food security.

In this context, a third important point, also connected to the above, is that as a result of privatizations that sold off our distinguished institutions "like fathers" for next to nothing and general policies, we weakened the state power, or more accurately, the public power, in the face of domestic and foreign capital and pushed it into the background. We pushed public power so far into the background that the national interests defended during elections were practically replaced by the interests of powerful international capital after the elections. As a result, the burden of principal and interest, which will be carried for generations, remained hanging around our necks due to build-operate-transfer or public-private partnerships implemented in pursuit of political kickbacks and interests. It is obvious that the war preparations of an economy under covert and overt financial exploitation will be difficult. Foreign dependency in a series of areas, primarily energy, technology, and financing sources, can not only damage the possibility of countries remaining neutral but also leaves them tied hand and foot in a serious situation.

Perceiving all these warnings at once and turning them into an opportunity to reverse the mistakes made actually requires political maturity and merit. Let us hope that we can attain such a political maturity, which we have not been able to feel much until now, in the face of the threat of war! However, right at this point, an issue that discourages us is that, as the saying "you do not change horses in midstream" reminds us, war or similar events, by taking advantage of the opportunity and perhaps exaggerating it a bit, encourage a hardening in politics, or even a transition from possible political administration to command administration, even if it is in the type of a single-man regime, and can even make it necessary, albeit with a bit of force. This is exactly where the problem is knotted. Namely, when we identify the main reason for our drifting into the issues I summarized briefly above as moving away from the ordinary, relatively democratic parliamentary system to a single-man regime, and when we think that the partial resolution of the listed problems could be provided by a transition to a more proper political regime, we are then confronted with semi or full dictatorial regimes forced by possible war threats. Could it be an interesting coincidence of history that the existing political cadre, which criticized the CHP for bringing up rationing and other restrictions in the shadow of the Second World War, will hopefully not find itself facing a similar situation now!

Although it seems a bit difficult, let us hope that the fire feeding the boiling/heated cauldrons goes out, or is extinguished, and our concerns vanish!