A changing world, unchanging attitudes

Obama’s visit to Turkey has been discussed in all its aspects for days, celebrated with enthusiasm, taken up from many angles, or else the displays of affection shown on the occasion of this visit are condemned, and those who express positive views about the trip are criticised, perhaps belittled, as too fond of being friendly to the point of naivety (“fazla ayran gönüllü”).

In short, the Obama issue also did not pass without setting us against one another. True, we do not even need a pretext to fall out with one another, but at a time when all sorts of occasions are being treated as a perfect opportunity for everyone to pour out the stones in their skirts, the Obama issue could not be passed over either.

It is said that Obama’s only difference from Bush is the colour of his skin. His gestures toward Muslims, which at times border on exaggeration at every opportunity, have supposedly no purpose other than repairing America’s image damaged by Bush, giving American imperialism a new, fresh energy, synergy, sympathy, excitement and power, and in the end sustaining American hegemony.

America has supposedly changed tactics, realised that the Bush style was not effective in sustaining hegemony, and with Obama is creating new fields of tactics and manoeuvre.

What kind of expectation are those who listen to all these statements as analysis being led into?

To prove that he is different from Bush or that he is sincere, must Obama, for instance, renounce every kind of effort concerning American hegemony? Must he sacrifice the interests of the American people or state to the interests and happiness of the rest of the world? Besides, what could possibly be wrong with his trying to rid himself of the American image that Bush turned upside down? For this, I have truly not been able to understand where in the scope of analysis falls the advance declaration that the small gestures made to Muslims have no meaning at all. Even if we count these as analysis, what kind of policy can be proposed for Turkey based on them?

Of course, it can always be recommended, and is recommended, to have a maxim of not being too exaggerated in love and hatred, in joys and anxieties. The lightness of feeling the excitement of a kind of mahdi’s glad tidings in Obama’s arrival should also be criticised when seen, but one must also see that a strange and harmful psychology is at work in the pessimism displayed in advance that Obama’s presidency or any of his policies toward Turkey will never be in Turkey’s favour.

We are dealing with an approach that perceives the world within an utterly metaphysical fixity, and according to this perception no element of the world, no actor, ever changes. Passivity has been written for Turkey in every case. In none of its relations with America is Turkey considered fit for the role of an autonomous actor that knows its own interests and can represent them. By the same logic, other actors too are never granted any chance or possibility of change.

Those who take the world with such fixities can neither grasp the nature of life nor grasp change in the world. We do not even realise that what we do, by reminding everyone we meet of fixed characteristics we attribute to them down to their ancestors fifty generations back, is a kind of racism, a kind of essentialism. Of course, the racism contained in this “essential” evil that we attribute to others is completed by the absolute goodness we attribute to ourselves.

As Leyla İpekçi, who wrote one of the pieces I found most sensible on the subject, put it: “If we are not going to look at whether there is something in what he says that touches the truth before claiming that Obama is Bush with make-up, it means we will once again be captive to the discourse that everything and everyone outside us is bad” (Taraf, 10 April).

In this world everything and everyone can change, and does change. Let us not, of course, fall into a needless and indifferent optimism, but let us know that even America can change. When America, as a country that observes system rationality to the utmost, puts forward the best option for itself, this need not be to the detriment of humanity. One needs to see that the Americans, who were able to make Obama their president despite the colour of his skin, have truly undergone a great revolution. Assessments that can regard even this change as unimportant are no different in their view of reality from the way the white racists of the thirties looked at Black people.

In Obama’s discourse expressed so far, there is, of course, a more effective hegemonic pursuit by America. But why should we think otherwise? Nothing could be more natural than America being in pursuit of hegemony, whether through Bush’s hand or through Obama’s.

Our perceptions of international relations getting more realistic assessments should take this fact as its basis.

When we make this assessment, we also need to understand that our believing in our own existence as an actor in this world is more important than this.

I had asked before, let me ask again: why would people who have nothing to say other than that nothing changes speak and write at all?

If they believe that what they speak and write can change something, is there not still hope?