Will the exile of knowledge ever end?

“A generation is being raised learning that knowledge is punished and ignorance is bliss. The next generation won't even know they are ignorant because they won't know what knowledge is.”

I have been encountering these words by Ursula K. (Kroeber) Le Guin frequently these days. In fact, they summarize the process quite simply. We are living in a period that is called the ‘information age’ or ‘information society’, but where knowledge has been sent into exile.

We are witnessing how the individual, who is a synthesis of social, cultural, and economic relations, harbors resentment toward those who strive to live as they think, in an environment largely dominated by those who live as they are told. Values, priorities, principles, and refusals are also in exile!

Is it not our right to ask now? What should we call an age where accessing information has become so easy, yet the infrastructure for accessing and interpreting accurate information has weakened?

Can the priorities of the day and their determinism distance humanity so much from the reality that we are beings beyond mere biological needs and pleasures?

And where should we place the state of mind where everyone thinks they are equal to everyone and everything, along with the effort to try to put others in their place, especially with social media and Twitter?

Economic decay affects everything from the foundation, yes, but how will social decay be repaired?

After this introduction, let us take a break to continue this topic later...

It is you who are 'Türkiyeli!'

This debate would emerge from time to time; it would be brought up with terms like ‘Turkey Literature’, ‘Turkish-language literature’, etc. This nonsense stems from the complex and hostility of some of our intellectuals who cannot say ‘Turk’ and view those who do as ‘racist’ or ‘fascist’. Furthermore, in the words of Attila İlhan, “Turkey has a quota for traitors.”

These days, the word ‘Türkiyeli’ (person from Turkey) is being tossed around again. They are trying to turn the word ‘Turk’ into an object of fear. You can be ‘French’, ‘German’, or ‘Italian’, but you can never be ‘Turk’; you can be ‘Türkiyeli’—whatever that means!

Is there any other place in the world with a group of people posing as intellectuals who are so hostile to their own national identity and civic consciousness?

Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s definition is clear: “The people of Turkey who founded the Republic of Turkey are called the Turkish nation.”

Turkey is a nation-state. As my esteemed professor Prof. Dr. Barış Doster also stated, “Turks have a language; Turkish. They have a state; the Republic of Turkey. They have a country; Turkey. In the historical process, Turk is the name of both the race and the national identity, the overarching identity, and the common identity.”

It is absurd for those who consider defending ethnicism, sectarianism, and feudal tribal or cult leaders as progressivism to label being Turkish as racism or fascism.

The secular Republic and Turkish identity, which are facing migration engineering through refugees and asylum seekers, demographic occupation, and the policies of the political Islamist government, are under siege and attack today.

It is this identity and the secular Republic of Turkey that stand like a fortress against the plans and projects in this country, which is intended to be divided, fragmented, and more easily governed through imperialist projects—whether they are called BOP (Greater Middle East Project), GOKAP, etc.—and ‘ummah’ (Islamic community) policies!

Unfortunately, some nationalists who have been dragged into ‘ummah’-ism by the Turkish-Islamic synthesis of the September 12 regime, as well as some leftists who have been severed from their own nation and land, either cannot see this, do not want to see it, or are knowingly part of it.

Let us emphasize once again: We who live on these lands are citizens of the Republic of Turkey. We are bound by the bond of citizenship. We are not 'Türkiyeli', we are Turks!