We are on the same bus

We are on the same bus. It just so happened that he sat in the empty seat next to me. After exchanging a few words, he secretly pointed with a sly smile at the man sitting across from us, facing our way.

The man is nearing fifty, sturdy and looking vigorous in clothes that don't look brand new but were carefully chosen. However, his thick, well-groomed mustache, drooping at the ends, stands out. It's clear my friend is going to bring up a topic related to the mustache. Yet, unable to escape the man's line of sight, he can't find the courage to speak despite a few attempts. He can only manage to say “right-winger,” shielding his mouth with his hand.

I don't know how much the man would embrace being defined as a right-winger, but I would bet my life that if I asked him, he would first say, “I am a nationalist (ülkücü).” His mustache looks more like a symbol than an aesthetic choice. At first glance, it is very difficult to guess what he thinks about the “founding leader.” But I suspect he no longer says, “our elders must know something.”

A few minutes later, my friend points to a young woman sitting on the right side of the aisle, and with the same secrecy, says, “leftist.”

I look at the woman as much as our line of sight allows; I see a small star tattoo on her neck. In her ear, as if to point to her tattoo, is a long chain with an arrow at the end; there is also a pair of cuffs. She has a beaded red string in her hair, which clearly hasn't been dyed for a while. As she turns toward the voice of the man sitting in the seat behind her, I notice the nose ring.

The man says, “Give me the water, daughter.” After saying the Basmala and taking a few sips from the water the woman gave him, he tells the person next to him that his daughter, who is a teacher, was appointed in her sixth year, thank God, before the system changed. He had a vow to fast. “We have no one left to take refuge in but God,” he continues.

***

There is a phrase attributed to İdris Küçükömer, though it does not belong to him, that is frequently repeated: “In Turkey, the right is the left; and the left is the right.”

The concepts of right and left entered our political language largely in the 1960s. The TİP (Workers' Party of Turkey), of which Küçükömer was also a member, which aimed to reach socialism through legal means with the working class at the forefront, along with laborers and intellectuals, was the left. The CHP, meanwhile, positioned itself on the political spectrum for the first time—before Bülent Ecevit was even the second man in the party—as: Center-Left.

The magazine Yön, which created a wide readership under the leadership of Doğan Avcıoğlu, was socialist. It saw socialism as a natural extension of Kemalism; however, it believed that a “Second National War of Liberation” against imperialism had to be fought in Turkey before the socialist struggle. Because a significant portion of the “civilian-military intellectual segment” and “nationalist revolutionaries” who possessed the spirit of independence to take part in this struggle showed interest, it cared about the CHP as much as it did the TİP.

The TİP placed Atatürk at the center as a revolutionary who had fought against imperialism. Like Yön, it also thought that a “Second National War of Liberation” struggle needed to be waged. But it added the caveat that this anti-imperialist struggle would only be successful if it were fought alongside the socialist struggle. This caveat told Yön and those who thought like it: The “civilian-military intellectual segment” you value in the name of the anti-imperialist front cannot be your true companions; do not show so much interest in the CHP just because it declared two days ago that it was on the Center-Left.

The TİP entered Parliament with 15 deputies in the 1965 elections. Yön experienced two seemingly different emotions at once during the process when the TİP entered Parliament: The vote the TİP received was a disappointment. It had hoped for more. In one respect, it was a cause for concern. Gaining more prestige by entering Parliament could make the TİP and its understanding of socialism more of a focal point.

In the summer of 1966, Avcıoğlu heavily criticized the TİP due to its choice regarding the path to socialism. Later, TİP members associated with the old-generation (“old guard”) communist Mihri Belli also drew their pens against the party leadership. TİP leader Mehmet Ali Aybar, on the other hand, launched a counter-attack by trying to substantiate the argument that the CHP was not and could not be left-wing: The CHP was an extension of the oppressive (“tyrannical”) Ottoman state administration tradition.

Around this time, Aybar was making very high claims for the 1969 elections, saying they would compete for the top. Yet, the TİP was far from the development required to meet these claims. The magazine Türk Solu, which began publication in late 1967 and was the organ of the National Democratic Revolution (MDD) Movement led by Belli, had also begun to attract young people, mostly university students like Deniz Gezmiş, much more than the TİP.

When the TİP could not develop an opening in the face of criticism and became worn out, issues that had not surfaced or had been ignored until then created a rift among the administrators. Behice Boran and Sadun Aren took a stance against Aybar. A group of party members who wanted to keep the cracking TİP alive formed a “unifying opposition.” Küçükömer, who was among this group, wrote articles in the Milliyet newspaper over the agenda of the CHP Congress, which was to be held a few weeks before the TİP Congress in November 1968, to contribute to the unification.

At the end of the day, the unifying opposition did not achieve results. Küçükömer, meanwhile, published his Milliyet articles in April 1969 under the title *The Alienation of the Order: Westernization*. In the book, he also presented the political tradition he claimed existed in Turkey to the reader with a striking table.

In the column titled “left side” of the table, there was a line “based on the easternist-Islamist popular front coming from the janissary-tradesman-ulema union.” This line extended from the Second Group in the First Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TBMM) to the Democrat Party and the Justice Party. In the column titled “right side,” there were the Committee of Union and Progress, the First Group in the First TBMM, and the CHP as those “representing the Westernist-secular bureaucratic tradition.”

Küçükömer was not saying here “the right is the left; the left is the right.” But by deepening the argument that Aybar had been voicing for some time, he was saying that the CHP is not actually left-wing, but the continuation of the political line that has held power for centuries and stands against the people; that is why the broad masses of the people do not vote for the CHP, which they see as alien to themselves, but for right-wing parties.

***

We are on the same bus. Not on a ship. This bus has no compartments. We are traveling side by side. Sometimes standing, sometimes sitting. This bus has no floors, pools, casinos, or royal suites. We enter on level ground, we exit on level ground.

We are on the same bus. The best of us lives just above the poverty line. Those responsible for our fundamental problems are not here. Safe housing, healthy nutrition, clean water, clean air... environmentally friendly, cheap transportation... children's rights, environmental rights, digital rights... freedom of thought... a good education... jobs according to talent, equal pay for equal work... are not here. Most of those who prefer to say “our elders must know something” have also boarded those private vehicles with flashing lights and left. Küçükömer’s broad masses of the people and Avcıoğlu’s civilian-military intellectual are on this bus.

***

Küçükömer was right when he said that social progress could not be achieved by imitating the West without leaning on one's own historical and social reality. But he absolutized the bureaucracy he placed against the broad masses of the people, the segment Avcıoğlu called the “civilian-military intellectual”; as he chose to look from very far away, he became “alienated” from it. When the right and left got involved, everything fell apart.

The problem he pointed out, with the opportunity provided by the construct he preferred, was drowned out in the noise of meaningless categorical squabbles whose connection to the reality of who is right-wing and who is left-wing had weakened.

In fact, Avcıoğlu said what Küçükömer said in some points with different concepts. He complained that the concepts of progressivism and reactionism, which had gained their content during the War of Independence years, had been emptied of their content over time; that people were labeled as progressive or reactionary only according to whether they were close to or distant from the Western lifestyle. He suggested putting these concepts in their proper place and exposing the capitalists who use people's sacred values for this.

Avcıoğlu did not find it right to consider Aydın Yalçın “progressive” just because he had a Western lifestyle and was anti-Nurcu, or to consider the anti-imperialist Nurcu Osman Yüksel Serdengeçti “reactionary” just because he did not wear a tie. With the same thought, while Küçükömer’s political tradition table was not yet around, he tried to make his voice heard a few times to the “nationalist-devout” Nurettin Topçu. To Topçu, who felt both respect and closeness to Hüseyin Avni Ulaş, the leader of the Second Group. His voice did not reach much.

On the other hand, Topçu’s young students visited Küçükömer at that time, saying it was “one of the first examples of the ‘right-left’ dialogue.” From the dialogue to today, the labels remained: right, left. Because what was being dialogued were the labels. Whereas they were supposed to speak from heart to heart. They were supposed to remove the labels and look into each other’s faces as human beings.

It is not easy, of course. But one must look. Not to take sides unfailingly, but to determine the sides... looking at the actors, parties, organizations, debates, concepts, and symbols of the past. To start by looking at what they will teach us in determining today’s sides within the ongoing struggle of history. Without becoming a prisoner of the concepts we are enchanted by. Without sacrificing reality to concepts and symbols that can no longer convey their message. Without becoming the last link in the intellectual chains that are crudely and carelessly associated with all their historical burdens that prevent us from hearing each other’s voices.

We are on the same bus. On the edge of a geography that created capitalism, while new things are being put in place of what modernization has transformed piece by piece, we are losing our place and home, and we are encountering lifestyles we are not accustomed to. We are worried. We want our footing not to slip, our integrity not to be broken; sometimes, we hold on to things, whether appropriate or not.

We are on the same bus. On the edge of a geography that created the Enlightenment, while we breathe in the spirit of revolution, we see more clearly that the order we are accustomed to in our place and home is not humane, and we do not accept it. We exert our will. We want our footing not to be slipped, our integrity not to be broken; we demand liberty, equality, fraternity, and justice.

We are on the same bus. Not on a ship.