Social science through the eyes of the "others"

In the social sciences, society is treated as a field of differences. Nothing is more natural than for those who differ from one another to develop certain perspectives about each other and to hold certain perceptions of one another. People's perceptions of elements different from themselves are shaped either by elaborated theoretical, religious and cultural classifications or by certain experiences concerning them. Because experience is continuous, every new experience and every new contact also affects people's perceptions of one another. Either the earlier perceptions are reinforced still further, or they change in the course of this contact.

In an environment where the different elements of a society are in conflict, a social scientist who wants to understand and explain everything that is going on in the whole of society does not try to see the "others" through the eyes of one of the parties. For example, the data needed to understand the Kurds in Turkey are not sought in the statements of those who did their military service in the east and fought in clashes with the PKK, and the data needed to understand the Alevis are not to be found in the conservative streets of Maraş.

It is clear that objective knowledge about the "others" cannot be produced through the eyes of one side; at most, this way reveals only how the "others" are perceived in the eyes of that side. Such knowledge, if the subject under study is not the whole of society but only one side, can provide useful data about that side's conceptual world, its experiences and perceptions concerning the people or groups it has made into "others," and the ways in which it classifies or labels them. These are the simple and basic points that must be observed in sociological research.

The findings of the study titled "Being Different in Turkey: Those Marginalized along the Axis of Religion and Conservatism," carried out under the direction of Binnaz Toprak with the support of the Open Society Institute and Boğaziçi University, have been debated for several days now. The most important finding of the study is that conservatism in Turkey is growing stronger day by day and is becoming the source of an intolerance, growing with each passing day, particularly toward secularists. How was this finding reached? The interviewees were asked about their experiences of eating openly during the month of Ramadan, wearing a miniskirt and the harassment encountered for it, drinking alcohol, and otherwise maintaining a secular lifestyle, and a significant portion of the interviewees told serious "stories of pressure" in this regard. With these findings, compiled from face-to-face interviews with a total of 401 people in 12 provinces, the phenomenon of rising conservatism was sociologically explained. The problem here is that nearly all of these interviewees are people who have built their identities almost entirely on their problems with conservatism. All the subjects of the research were identified by organizations such as the CHP provincial organizations, the Atatürkist Thought Associations, Eğitim-Sen, the Pir Sultan Abdal Associations, the Hacı Bektaş Veli Associations and the Cem Foundation.

In fact, when one goes to interviewees identified in this way, one need not even be a social scientist to predict what kind of stories of conservatization or "neighborhood pressure" will come out. Just as people hold a perception of others, they are generally not unaware of the perception others hold of them. It is troubling that a social science study was carried out without even taking this very ordinary everyday knowledge into account.

Ayşe Böhürler (Yeni Şafak, 20 December 2008) rightly asks, against all these stories of pressure: "For instance, has the number of cem houses decreased, have those who wear miniskirts stopped wearing them, have those who drink been unable to find a place to drink, have the Roma, who used to find work everywhere, now become unable to find it, and have women, Alevis or minorities, who never faced discrimination before, started facing it only now?"

The more detailed answers to these questions, whose answers are contained within them, are given by Ömer Çaha in his comprehensive article published in the Açık Görüş supplement of the newspaper Star. Çaha, who has been closely following all the provinces where the research was conducted for years, refutes with his direct observations all the examples about, for instance, women being unable to smoke on the street or wear miniskirts in Sakarya and Trabzon.

I too have personally followed more or less all the provinces named for years, and like Çaha I am an actual witness to the modernization taking place in all of these cities. Indeed, the universities spreading across all the cities of Anatolia make urban life extremely cosmopolitan. By bringing into the city elements relatively foreign to the region, that is, different ones, along with their cultures of entertainment and leisure-socializing, they accelerate the change of societies. Research on change and conservatism in Turkey would encounter a different picture if it took only this factor into account.

Ali Bayramoğlu's study conducted in 2006 on behalf of TESEV and published under the title "Modernity Does Not Tolerate Superstition" is one of the good examples showing, comparatively and very well, how different and how comprehensive the results can be when an appropriate methodology and perspective are applied. Trying to understand, mutually, the changing worlds of the devout and the secular in the process of democratization, Bayramoğlu, looking from such a place, focused not so much on the points where different elements in Turkey separate from one another by othering each other as on the points of transition and fusion they experience with one another.

This is presumably what one does when one truly cares about understanding.

* * *

THE "DISABLED" DISPUTE OF INTELLECTUALS

Some friends thought that in the title of my Saturday column the adjective "özürlü" (disabled/apologetic) had been applied to the "intellectuals" rather than to the "dispute," which was my obvious intention. Even if I think differently from those who signed the apology petition, it never crossed my mind to make such an accusation against any of them. On the contrary, I tried to point to the underdevelopment of a culture of thinking differently from one another among intellectuals, among whom I include myself. For any misunderstandings my expressions may have caused, I ask forgiveness from those to whom I owe an apology.