The month of May and Turkey: The power of the republican accumulation

Serdar Akinan performed an important piece of journalism and, even if jokingly, made it easier for us to ask the following question: “Is Sibel Edmonds reading 12punto?” It is certain that she has no knowledge of our site. There is something else...

The point we want to reach is important, but first, let us make some reminders.

After May 1st comes May 19th. And after that comes May 27th...

“Is this a coincidence?”

It could be, but even if it is, it is a beautiful coincidence. These are dates that complement each other. The first is undoubtedly the most radical due to the demands it contains; the subsequent ones are perhaps relatively a step back within the framework of those demands, but they are still forward steps with great historical significance.

We are coming to May 19th. The date when the “Sacred Rebellion” was initiated. Some will always remember and remind others of this historiography. It is inevitable. The majority of the Turkish people have largely internalized this rebellion and its progressive results, primarily secularism and independence.

Let us enter from another angle. Was “1923” based on a historical legitimacy, or was it an anomaly?

It is certain that every kind of religious person, Turkist, Kurdist, and liberal would answer “it was an anomaly” if they were sincere in their views. If they were honest, they would say that this republic was a child that should not have been born. They certainly would not say that. But in the end, they are all unhappy with “Turkey 1923.” With the exception of communists, all political movements are suspicious of this step of historical progress.

Only socialists/communists have argued that the founding of the Republic of Turkey was the product of a historical legitimacy. They declared that they would carry this forward project in history even further. For this reason, they clashed to the death with the anomalists.

The resentment of those who see the republic as a parenthesis lies here.

All those who label “Turkey 1923” as an anomaly that was unearned, lacked a mass base, and was not the result of philosophical accumulation are related. However, it is useful for the revolutionary wings of the left, the socialists, and the communists to remember that they are also related.

Anyway, these are not very important. What is important is the acceptance that the Republic of Turkey was not born into a vacuum.

What kind of foundation did the founding have that, for example, right-wing governments in Turkey could not succeed in doing what Hitler did in Germany—crushing the German people almost to the last person, i.e., Nazifying them? Why are the Turkish people not becoming religious, why are they not organizing demonstrations carrying American and NATO flags? Why were those carrying EU flags “in negligible amounts” and why did they disappear?

IS IT “POPULAR KEMALISM” THAT IS FRIGHTENING?

They did not succeed, yes: The overwhelming majority of the Turkish people are continuing the republic by contributing new variations to the tendencies of the founding fathers. The republic is being saved from within the people, it is being kept alive. Orhan Gökdemir’s reminder, to the effect that “they may have killed the republic and its institutions, but they cannot bury the corpse,” is a very meaningful observation.

So, is it possible to “return to 1923,” or in other words, “return to factory settings,” as a solution to the great crisis we are going through? It is not. However, the AKP is having real difficulty in making the people resemble itself. Or rather, it cannot make them resemble it. Attention! As a related political attitude, in the last century in Italy, Spain, and most importantly in Germany, peoples could be turned into militants of the fascist regimes in power.

The talk has gone on too long. What we were going to say was this: What was present in 1923, that is, at the founding, that somehow spoiled the work of the reactionaries who came to power in later years? When I say “spoiled the work,” I mean this: Where should the reason be sought for the fact that the AKP government could not crush the Turkish people to the last person, that is, could not bury the republic despite strangling it? Could this reason not be in our historical accumulation, or even in our intellectual accumulation?

The people’s ownership of the republican regime draws strength from historical accumulation as much as it does from current events. There is a socialistic “popular Kemalism” in the air. The AKP regime created this and is very afraid of it. Because the reaction to the religious regime is popularizing this interpretation of socialistic Kemalism. We know that thought that becomes mass-based turns into a material force at that stage. This force is giving signals of mobilization.

We touch upon the shortcomings in the founding more or less. The flaws are many. However, “Turkey 1923” is a historical progression and is also the product of a philosophical/political accumulation.

Whatever liberals and their sycophants, nationalists, and sharia supporters say, the republic was not born into an intellectual vacuum or error. But it rose upon an intellectual accumulation with very high political sagacity. This accumulation was ready for intervention as a political sagacity, and thanks to this feature, it was able to evaluate the great revolution in the neighbor that overturned the established order of the world. This was an action-oriented richness that was much more important than intellectual depth or intellectual wealth. Yalçın Küçük’s “Theses on the Intellectual” is also an intervention in our history based on this foundation. There are others, of course...

We can say that our history of enlightenment and our intellectual accumulation, which were squeezed into the last century of the Ottoman Empire, gave birth to a republic. Prof. Dr. Zafer Toprak withdrew from this world by explaining all these things and publishing great books one after another. These names are many. They are great. I would also like to add to their ranks the lifelong effort of Dr. Ziya Somar, the owner of the first philosophy doctorate (1946) taken from the republic’s university system, whose works have not come to light. (But that is another story.) In other words, the summary of the summary is that there is no state here that was founded “off the cuff” just because three or five Ottoman pashas thought of it and said, “this is the opportunity.”

1923 is not an apple that fell on our heads from the sky.

The Republic was born from a preparation, from an accumulation, while a dissolving and decaying empire was dying on its deathbed, and the dynasty and its imperialist masters were wreaking havoc on the people. A statue carved for decades, let us say. That is why the religious government cannot bury the republic. Because it is facing an idea that has met with its matter, that is, a material force. This is probably what is meant by “popular Kemalism.”

This transformation does not evaporate within the bureaucracy or the state, it does not disappear. It definitely reminds itself. Thought definitely remembers matter, and matter definitely remembers thought. It turns into energy. Especially if a socialist catalyst appears on the scene...

They are afraid of this.

Let us return to the beginning: The results Sibel Edmonds drew from her interviews with her own sources are open to debate. But it is understood that the questions asked in the article published in this column last month (“Three unanswered questions and what does not decay?”) are being asked in very wide circles, everywhere except for the intra-system opposition.

So, why are they so afraid, and why do they constantly test this fear and the tendencies of the people with a repressive regime that recognizes no law or anything?

Because they think that “Turkey 1923,” that is, the republican regime, is the result of a historical legitimacy and the republican intellectual accumulation in this geography, that it has found its matter in the people despite all the damage, and that this can remind itself in the form of surprises and leaps within history.

They cannot have failed to take precautions. We are entering difficult times.