'Those outside the stage' and the desperation in European democracy

We can accept this as a pretext to ask a question: The documentary released yesterday about Prof. Dr. Yalçın Küçük, who has stamped all creative intellectual interventions of the last 50 years, and the voluminous book distributed alongside it (“Ateşten Düşünce – Yalçın Küçük”), are on the agenda of those interested.

Good, and we can already say that this unforgettable revolutionary “thinker” will continue to exist in our intellectual arena for decades to come. Dr. Küçük will experience the fate of exceptional thinkers who can open new doors and will always be debated. How he was a “pathfinder,” or more accurately, as his long-time companion Mesut Odman puts it, how he was an “icebreaker,” and which frozen soil he tried to make bloom and why/how, will be discussed for years to come. His theses will be heavily debated.

Let us take a step forward and look at today.

The Turkish intellectual is still beating themselves up to develop a program of liberation, and while doing so, they do not shy away from paying the heaviest prices (“our magical prison”).

The problem is not this.

The problem is this: Are there such intellectuals in Europe, upon which Turkey is dependent at its core, and if they exist, do they have any influence? Do they carry any weight? Are they brave?

We are not just talking about taking risks or putting one's neck on the line if necessary. Our concern is not just the accumulation of knowledge either. We are talking about being able to create a transcendence and creating the mass necessary for this. There is undoubtedly plenty of knowledge and knowledgeable people in the major European languages. But what we are looking for is something different. After all, Europe is a “thing” rising upon imperial remnants.

Yalçın Küçük was producing within the framework of a republican, socialist program of liberation and reconstruction. It is very clear that this is the result of a need.

The question is in which “democratic” country of Europe such a need, similar programs, and transcendent intellectuals can be found, and for what reasons.

The answer to this question, if it is being asked, is “Not today!” It does not exist because, perhaps, there is not yet the kind of destruction we have and the need born from it. Of course, it existed in the first half of the last century. The intellectual is, in the end, a derivative of a social and historical need. One could also say they are its product.

In that case, the last rupture in European languages was dared a century ago. And that last exit was not without results. It materialized in many Eastern European countries in 1945, and these were razed to the ground in 1990. However, we witnessed decades where, for example, a German Democratic Republic, with its existence and its absence, determined the fate of all of Europe. Anyway... Past times...

Let us look at today.

The -now scarce- possibilities of Europe's imperial and/or imperialist democracies had dazzled the eyes of intellectuals and intellectual candidates in Turkey-type countries for decades. They even blinded them. Especially during the Cold War. This “artificial violence” first removed socialism from the agenda of the intellectual in Europe and then turned intellectual candidates into simple technocrats; the brave hearts who continued to seek an advanced leftist republic were left alone. They withered. They surrendered themselves to the brightness of the neons, and thus to captivity. Calls for a principled/programless “united front” and standing “side by side” never left their lips.

They became unable to transcend the boundaries of this great illusion.

They could neither escape the blinding effect of imperial brilliance nor jump over the shadow created by those lights. The shadow was so large/dark and those deceptive neons were so powerful that they could not overcome it.

It is enough to take a look at the streets and the media world of today's Germany. Let us not count the few and ineffective exceptions for now.

This means that areas, countries, and languages where the neons are not so bright and the shadows are not so large/dark are important.

Perhaps only those who can step outside the imperial stage (the imperialist framework), the actors outside this stage, have a chance.

Those inside the stage, that is, the existing, reasonable opposition, are running in a blinded and deafened state toward a “sinkhole” that has reached terrifying dimensions. Those outside the stage, if they can massify this daring of theirs, will have done a great service not only to their own languages and peoples but to humanity as well.

Because the sinkhole is growing. It could swallow humanity too.

New generations of intellectuals who can step outside the existing systems in Turkey and the EU contain a potential power that could change the fate not only of Anatolia but of the entire region and even the world. We have to think about this.

The coming together of intellectual generations who can jump over their own shadows, and who can do this with naturalness, with the working classes for a transcendent republic (“Long live the working intellectual republic!”), and thus the thought attaining its substance and becoming a material force, is possible not in the very democratic countries polished by imperialist remnants, but in the lap of countries like ours, languages, intellectuals, and working classes that are in the midst of a catastrophe.

Turkey and the Turkish language are pregnant with many riches.