Negative selection

Türkçe: https://www.turkishnews.com/tr/content/2013/04/05/akpye-degnekcilik-yapan-liberaller-bu-haberi-iyi-okusun/

At a think tank meeting on March 31, Aziz Babuscu, chairman of the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) Istanbul branch, told the audience the following: “Those who have become stakeholders during our 10-year rule will not be allowed to remain so during our next decade. During the past 10 years there were stakeholders for the ‘liquidation’ and ‘redefinition’ process on the basis of the discourse we carried out on freedom, law and justice. For instance, liberal groups have been such stakeholders in one way or another, despite the fact that they have not been able to ‘absorb’ (i.e. ‘approve of’) us. But the future will be a reconstruction period. Reconstruction will not be as they desire it to be. Therefore they will not be able to be with us. Those who have “walked together” with us will become stakeholders along with those who are against us. Turkey and its restored future will not be a future they will be able to accept. That is why our job will be much more difficult.”

These words were, of course, uttered in a very serious context and definitely no April Fool’s Day joke. They come in a period full of harsh polarization, tough debate, real doubts about the political path and with the considerable lack of transparency, confusion about what sort of constitutional design befits Turkey.

If anyone takes this statement as confirmation of a long-standing “hidden agenda” or “concealed intent”, s/he will have to be given credit. Babuscu’s words indeed sound like a confession, and demand a real clarification. When analyzed thoroughly, the statement screams of problematic, threatening reasoning.

Large swaths of political and social actors in this country, be that liberals or reformist social democrats, Kurds or Alevis, Armenians or Assyrians, Hizmet Movement affiliates or pro-change post-Islamists, have stood behind AKP as the carrier of the long-overdue, massive transformation of an authoritarian, deeply tutelage-stained, repressive old Turkey into a new one where all citizens can at last start to live with a constitutionally guaranteed freedom, equality, rule of law, justice, economic stability and overall predictability of a safe future.

Whether they voted for the AKP or not, many of them have been accused by the status-quo actors of being “fellow travelers,” who would at the end of they parade, be the modern victims of Machiavellian politics. Because the transformation process is still unfinished and as a new state is taking shape in a slow motion manner, with some shades, they still stand as targets in the “Didn’t we tell you so?” game. Yet, given the two larger-than-life objectives, namely the Kurdish problem and the new constitution, in the problematic asymmetry of politics and the frightening prospect of a horrible backlash, they will have to stand tall.

In fact, in a nutshell, for many of those I mentioned, the real choice was to look on passively or to be an active part of building a joint future. Babuscu’s statement is that of a politician who hopes that his ruling, unchallenged party will align itself with a state it controls, and distance itself from the reformist grassroots of various political lines.

More than any other segment, it was the (social) liberals who helped the AKP to conceptualize the “normalization” with their considerable political know-how. More than any other segment, it was the modernist Islamic movements that mobilized the crowds in Anatolia to get behind the dream of a politically diverse, economically strong Turkey. If Babuscu’s words are secretly shared by his party men, any alienation of these segments I mentioned will primarily hurt the political executive, causing serious damage to a benevolent path.

Negative selection has marked the entire history of Turkey. Its rulers have always practiced the harsh and systematic exclusion of social actors from being productive stakeholders. The result has been bitterness, hatred, brain-drain, polarity, lack of a consensus culture…

Are Babuscu and his friends aware of history? Their real choices may surface, but the struggle for a new, free, just Turkey is not over — yet.