What are we surprised at?

Every detail that has emerged about the massacre committed in Mardin has, strangely, begun to weave new veils of fog over the real nature of the event.

Yet however clear it may seem, we should be accustomed enough by now to know that the first impression created by such outrage-provoking events should never be trusted. What makes first impressions hard to trust is not only the fine craftsmanship that those who stage such events generally display in distorting the reasons for their acts, or even in directing the accusations at other targets. Even where no such fine craftsmanship is involved, events are reflected through the ready-made moulds, prejudices and everyday mythologies in the minds of media members. Moreover, it would be unfair even to imply that there is an open intent here. A carelessness, a lack of attention, shapes the language of the media.

What the investigations of Mazlum-Der on the event, and what our friend İbrahim Karagül pointed out in his article yesterday, show that the event may not be as clear as it first appeared.

However, there are also facts that appear certain. For instance, the strange feigned incomprehension and the excessive astonishment displayed toward this event.

We say that we cannot understand how such a great atrocity could be committed even against an enemy. Undoubtedly this is, in one respect, a good thing… Failing to understand means refusing to accept. But I fear that one of the most important reasons making it hard for us to accept this event is simply the sheer number of those who fell victim to the murder. As if the event would have been less surprising had it stayed at the level of 10-15 people rather than 44.

Yet for those who realise that killing one person is killing all of humanity, there is no difference between killing one person and killing many.

Once the weapons with which the murder was committed are picked up and aimed at a target, they make it possible to kill many people “easily.” In an environment where the weapon is so easy to obtain, there must also be values that ensure it is not used.

Yet the very availability of these weapons works to destroy those values too. The purpose for which a weapon is produced and procured is the killing of human beings. In the making of every weapon there is an intention to kill a human being, a potential that has set out on its way. Weapons are made to kill people; for those who take a weapon in hand, at a certain point it no longer matters against whom they will use it.

People who are astonished at the killing of 44 people in this way can watch, with great indifference, news on the same day about dozens of terrorists killed in a terror attack, and perhaps, God forbid, have become thoroughly used to hearing in the same attack of a few martyrs.

In a world that has made killing people a routine and adapted its entire way of life and consumer culture accordingly, don’t you find it rather hypocritical to pump up astonishment by looking at the number of deaths in any given event and, to some extent, at its staging?

Because of the incident in Mardin, eyes have turned once again to the customary codes (töre).

Since much has been said, I am cutting it short. Associating this event with customary codes only feeds orientalist fantasies about the region. There is no way to reconcile any aspect of this event with any customary code known to have been valid in the region from of old. Ali Bulaç, who, like me, is a person of the region and has for years witnessed, with his sociological analyses, both the customary codes of the region and its transformation, summarised it very well. In no customary code is there killing women, taking disproportionate revenge, breaking the order of turns in a blood feud, shooting someone while he is praying, let alone shooting babies. Those who did this event clearly recognise no rule, no customary code at all.

The truth is that the customary codes in the region have also weakened far more than is supposed. Much of what is said to be done in the name of töre consists of nothing but the monstrous hybrid forms of tribal pride that emerged under modern conditions and modern individuality.

The customary codes have undergone, especially in the modern period, a change that has made it impossible to sustain them in a healthy way. Even if there are things left over from the customary codes, which have largely become dysfunctional with the development of modern legal and educational institutions, they lack coherence or integrity.

The March 29 local elections have also shown very clearly that the tribes cannot maintain their former influence. Urbanisation has had its effect traumatically and has razed the old relations to the ground. Neither the aga’s agahood nor the sheikh’s sheikhood remains.

Moreover, these events could have taken place, and have taken place, not in Mardin but anywhere in Anatolia. That is why, if we want to get to the real causes of such events, we must focus not on customary codes that belong to the past but on the nature of the change we are living through.