Elites and elitists

To claim that the ongoing conflict in Turkey is simply between centralist elites on one side and bottom-up popular strata on the other obscures a clear understanding of the situation. The reasons for this confusion become better understood when examining the quality of the conflict as well as the balance of power and means deployed by the opposing parties.

First of all, if being an "elite" implies a certain level of quality, it is very difficult to argue that the faction considered elitist in our current conflict displays any impressive quality. On the contrary, what we observe is an extremely low-quality, unprincipled, completely degraded scene—blinded and out of control, recognizing no value that it would not exploit or sacrifice in the struggle for power—which hardly reflects any level of elite status. One might have expected those who have occupied elite positions in society for so many years to have developed a code, etiquette, style, or even a sense of honor during these periods of struggle; yet, there is no such thing.

Secondly, the other side of this power struggle—the side expressing itself through democracy or the popular will—now possesses a substantial historical accumulation of power in Turkey's political history. Ever since Turkey transitioned to democratic life, the political parties representing the so-called power elites have never won an election. Elections have consistently been won by popular segments outside these elites and outside the center.

This situation legitimately brings certain questions to mind: Although right-wing conservative governments have continuously ruled Turkey—at least at the government level—since 1950, the rhetoric of "elites" as an "Other" has never been absent from right-wing political discourse. Due to these virtually uninterrupted right-wing governments, many policies of the state bear a right-wing conservative label. In contrast, these same conservative circles constantly complain about the elites holding power. In many instances, these elites serve as an excuse for failing to meet the demands of their own base. But does the excuse-making of right-wing conservative governments justify underestimating their power?

If we exclude Bülent Ecevit's Cyprus (1974) and Öcalan-promoted (1999-DSP) elections, it is well known that the CHP has not won a single election since 1950. Despite this, is it possible to attribute the hegemony that the CHP maintained stably over the system throughout this period—and never lost—simply to the political skill of CHP executives?

A reader wrote to me: "Those who complain about elitists today have been in power for 60 years. A few prosecutors, a few judges, and some individuals in the bureaucracy who are targeted as elitists no longer possess any economic power. Compared to the positions AKP members have gained within the system today, it is embarrassing to even call these people central powers anymore."

Because we hear similar comments quite frequently, I felt the need to share this. This interpretation, which dismisses in a single stroke even Şerif Mardin's proposal to read political history through the center-periphery dialectic, clearly views the judicial bureaucracy moving against the so-called "national will" today as the sole address of that center. In that case, by looking at the assets and class origins of a couple of prosecutors, five or ten university rectors, or a few other bureaucrats who have single-handedly assumed the role of opposition to the government, we could produce a very different picture.

It is obvious that those who attempt such analyses fail to take into account the organic relationships and nature of the ideological commitments of the blocks engaged in the political struggle. They suggest that we view the entire power struggle merely at the level of simple personal characteristics of the visible actors in the process.

If you disregard ideological analysis, how can you understand the relationship with elitist circles of the Chief Prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Appeals who—as Mümtaz'er Türköne pointed out—was raised as the child of a family from Şanlıurfa and graduated from Yıldırım Beyazıt High School, bearing all lower-class characteristics?

Today, it is clear that the group characterized as the elitists resisting in this conflict possesses no elite qualities whatsoever. Nor should one expect them—or the side they are fighting against—to exhibit a class-homogeneous structure. Who ever said that the elements mobilized in all power struggles are always identical to one another?

Or are they trying to imply that those resisting transformation in Turkey are the ones who committed the Council of State murder or pulled the trigger in the Hrant Dink assassination?