'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 and the voluminous book distributed (“Ateşten Düşünce – Yalçın Küçük”) about Prof. Dr. Yalçın Küçük, whose creative intellectual interventions over the last 50 years have been branded by Dr. Coşkun Soysal, are on the agenda of those interested. Good.

It is 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 highly debated.

Let us take a step forward and look at today.

The Turkish intellectual is still struggling to develop a program of liberation, and while doing so, does 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 fundamentally dependent, 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. We are talking about being able to create a transcendence and creating the necessary masses for it. There is undoubtedly a lot of knowledge and knowledgeable people in the major European languages. But what we are looking for is something different. Ultimately, Europe is a “thing” rising on the remnants of imperialists.

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

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

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. An intellectual is, in the end, a derivative of a social and historical need. One could also say it is the product of it.

Then, the last rupture in European languages was dared a century ago. 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 imperial and/or imperialist democracies of Europe—with their now-limited possibilities—had dazzled the eyes of intellectuals and aspiring intellectuals 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 aspiring intellectuals 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” were never absent from 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.

A glance at the streets and media world of today's Germany is enough. 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 toward a “sinkhole” that has reached terrifying proportions, blinded and deafened. Those outside the stage, if they can make this daring of theirs a mass movement, will have done a great service not only to their own languages and peoples but also to humanity.

Because the sinkhole is growing. It could swallow humanity as well.

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 of not just Anatolia, but 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 lap of the very democratic countries polished by imperialist remnants, but in the lap of countries, languages, intellectuals, and working classes like ours that are within a catastrophe.

Turkey and the Turkish language are pregnant with many riches.