Is 'Gezi' being reflected in Europe with a delay? What about the silent line?

“Everything happened all of a sudden,” wrote Orhan Veli 76 years ago, in the April 1, 1950 issue of the magazine Yaprak. It is a famous poem, as is well known.

I wonder if this poem was remembered during the Gezi days 13 years ago, during that greatest popular movement in our republican history? This poet? That ill-fated but republican poet whom people like us find a bit moderate?

Anyway...

Remembering or the like has no importance on its own. What is important is that weeks before the Democratic Party—one of the parties that dealt the most effective blow to the republican regime—came to power, such a “descriptive verbal intervention” appeared in the legendary “single-leaf” magazine Yaprak. With a poem, Orhan Veli had actually reminded us that societies have a history containing leaps that do not fit into molds.

How interesting our history is!

In such times, one always thinks of Mahmut Bey: Mahmut Dikerdem.

When we speak of Orhan Veli, we are talking about a poet and a poem from this legendary magazine, which our unforgettable peace warrior Mahmut Dikerdem financed out of his own pocket and for which he even wrote articles under the pseudonym M. Fırtınalı while he was a young civil servant in the foreign ministry. It is about a “Turkish intellectual mind” that heralds that everything happens and will happen all of a sudden... A flow that one's hand cannot reach and one's power cannot control.

But this is what even Hilmi Ziya Ülken had to see: The Turkish intellectual has never retreated into an ivory tower...

It is well known: For another of our unforgettable warriors, Yalçın Küçük, the Turkish intellectual is a wealth that should be defined by its activism rather than its intellectual accumulation. Its true great wealth lies there. It is necessary to abstract not the level of its knowledge, but the depth of its action.

What about the European intellectual?

The French, German, Italian, Polish intellectual?

Are these people the product of their philosophical and intellectual depth or their activism?

Whatever it may be: An intellectual, even if they carry differences in every space, is a creature that does not know how to be silent. This is a common trait in all languages.

Even those who do not want to see can suddenly find themselves facing mass protests or even a social leap.

EUROPE'S MAINSTREAM MEDIA

In the mainstream media of the rest of Europe, and especially Germany, looking at the events in France, a picture of a pathetic and victimized democracy being smashed by “looters” is being sold to the public. However, it is not sticking.

It is not sticking: Just like in the Gezi days. This door may close quickly, but it has been observed for a few days that it is impossible to calm the public's anger.

Because everything happens all of a sudden. It accumulates, it accumulates, and then it suddenly explodes.

Does the silence still continuing on the Germany-Austria line overshadow the movements in France, Italy, Spain, and Belgium? There is something strange going on.

But we have repeated very often that the mainstream media on the Germany-Austria line is no different from Turkey's A Haber. This, of course, leaves a residue. Perhaps they are trying to shed that residue. The climate created by Elif Eralp and her companions in Berlin does not fail to imply that the life of this silence may not be very long. But still, there is no reason to be too hopeful yet.

In other words, looking at the events that suddenly erupted in Europe, it would be an exaggeration to say this: Those who govern cannot govern as they used to, that is true, and those who are governed do not want to be governed as they used to; at least a segment, a segment with increasing weight, the millions in the lower-income group, seem tired of being governed as they used to. Good.

But isn't this a very old truth? “A truth that no longer adds anything to us.”

The new situation is in need of a different definition and assessment. More than a century has passed since the establishment of the first socialist state. Are we still going to be stuck in old definitions?

Europe's problem is not there. It can be said that those who govern cannot govern, and those who are governed are tired of this state of being governed.

The problem is this: Does the 99 percent who are governed actually want to govern themselves, do they think they can govern, do they believe in this?

That is exactly where we are stuck.

More than a century ago, in the first quarter of the last century, the working classes of Europe—those who create life and are governed—also had parties that demanded power and believed they could govern, for example, the CPs.

Now that is gone. Not only are there no effective, mass communist parties, but a significant portion of those that exist and carry the CP label have no intention of taking power. They have faded away into small identity-based communities. And those who remain do not believe in such a possibility themselves, so how can they make the masses believe?

Despite this, we are at an important turning point for capitalism. The machine is creaking. Neoliberal barbarism is now out of fashion. A Keynesian corrector is being sought within the system. Will it be found? It is difficult.

Even in the emergence of the Keynesian solution, the demand for power by communists played a compelling role in the last century. Without such a “threat,” today, the ruling classes can even resort to massacres like those experienced after the 1871 Paris Commune. Plutocrats... Ruthless rich people...

Whatever happens, Europe has begun to burst at the seams.

Let's not exaggerate too much. However, there is a growing chaos on the scene. We have to see it.

It would be right to end by saying this: Europe is not Turkey. The butterfly of freedom and equality is hovering over Turkey. Still...

Let us not forget.