Even if there is incitement to a discourse…

The famous French philosopher Michel Foucault has a type of pressure that he calls "incitement to discourse." In certain periods, in the face of certain events or situations, everyone is expected to join a certain discourse with certain attitudes. Not merely expected: to be able to take part in the legitimate discourse, everyone is forced to join certain discursive rituals in a state of "confession." It is a type of pressure that can be summarized as "Confess and be saved!" or "You say it too and save yourself." In one respect it is perhaps a kind of the "neighborhood pressure" that Şerif Mardin voiced some time ago.

It is clear that in one respect Hüseyin Üzmez's pedophilia case also contains such an incitement to discourse. In the face of this case, an atmosphere that is open to an incitement in which everyone picks up a stone and throws it at Üzmez and, through him, at the newspaper Vakit, and, stretching the range a bit further, at whomever or whatever it happens to hit, and that instantly condemns even the slightest precautionary prudence or hesitation, frankly frightens me very much.

Here, whether many of those inciting the stoning are more innocent than Üzmez is of course important, but that is not the point. The point is the authoritarian attitudes that incite to discourse without tolerating any precautionary stance in the face of this case. These attitudes come into play in the face of many events and push people into committing gross mistakes in haste. Let us admit that our level of debate and our way of approaching events show no sign of wisdom. Just as no great philosophers or thinkers have emerged from among us, our average philosophical level is not in a state to save us from failing in the tests knocking at the door. We are living in the age of multiple-choice tests, and even about our political attitudes we make our choices among the options put in front of us. Already the Üzmez case has left many people unable to look one another in the face.

In fact, even before he made the headlines as a pedophilia case, Hüseyin Üzmez had given sufficient warning with his exploits in the Müslüm Gündüz incident of 28 February. With his discourse in the newspaper Vakit and on some television programs, he had for a long time been giving enough signs that he was no less grave a case. Even long before it came out that he was a pedophilia case, Hüseyin Üzmez's Islamic discourse contained within it every kind of disease. But he was loaded, either by himself or by those who pushed him forward, with a fait accompli mission of Islamic representation.

That this mission of representation was given to him especially by the channels of the Doğan and other media groups is in itself a situation to dwell on. Indeed, I do not remember any discussion program in which Üzmez took part, from long ago, on Kanal 7, on Samanyolu, or on the other channels of the Islamic community. How was Üzmez made into an Islamist opinion leader by being paraded especially on the channels of the Doğan and other media groups? Moreover, after he was released through a scandalous forensic medicine report, it is the same channels that again broadcast his infuriating statements and openly advertised him.

At the same time, it is also a fact that Vakit newspaper alone constituted an exception to this boycott that the Islamic community had in fact long applied, knowingly or unknowingly. That this reason was not asked about earlier, whatever complex of whoever may have entered into the matter on account of this case, does not remove the rightfulness, even the necessity, of this question. To ask this question, to voice an expectation of self-criticism, of dissociation, of a sense of shame from the newspaper Vakit, one need not "tag along behind somebody," as the declaration announced by the valuable wise man Selahattin Çakırgil, by Rıdvan Kaya of Haksöz magazine, or by "a group of devout women" put it.

If a demand for justice has arisen, even in the language of adversaries, to display communal pride or chauvinism in the face of this demand destroys the community's mercy and blessing.

The hasty reaction displayed by the website of the newspaper Vakit to a criticism that a group of devout women made, listening to the voice of their conscience "without making it a matter of complex whether they might be pleasing the adversary," unfortunately shows that the problem is deeper than supposed. In response to this self-criticism, which common reason and conscience practically demanded without any hesitation, "taking refuge in a rumor that these women take money from the newspaper Hürriyet" is not a defense that can simply be brushed off.

First of all, the assumption that a criticism cannot come to it without "taking money" from Hürriyet or other outside circles looks like an expression of excessive and undeserved confidence, of arrogance. Second, as one of the devout women in question expressed it, saying this is no different from saying that headscarved women cover because they take money from somewhere (from Iran, from Saudi Arabia, from this or that community). That the secularist fantasy-contempt that headscarved women cannot act of their own will should be displayed by the newspaper Vakit itself, with this attitude, is an edifying situation.

Let alone everything else, once a discourse in which chaste women can be targeted this easily has been given such an easy path, what value can be fought for?

Let alone the existence of discursive incitements, wouldn't it be worth, in any case, honestly facing this question alone?