Cultures of living together and the Council of State's Turkey

The 6th of the horizon tours that the Civil Society Organizations (STÖ) in Konya have organized jointly for years is being held this year in Nevşehir-Kozaklı to put "cultures of living together" on the table. As a joint activity with the participation of 71 STÖs operating in different fields, whose productivity and originality are especially noteworthy, this activity has, in Konya, a dimension that reflects the deep strength of society itself but strengthens it further as it reflects it, and this emerges a bit more each year.

The "Horizon Tour," which in earlier "tours" took up the EU, education, civil society and change, with the intention of both participating in and contributing to the country's agenda, has this year chosen the heading "cultures of living together" in order to develop the word on topics on the agenda such as the civil constitution, neighborhood pressure, multiculturalism, Alevism-Sunnism and the Kurdish question, and to raise the quality of the word.

Actually, don't all the problems we live through at the same time stem from problems related to our "cultures of living together"?

Do we not experience problems in proportion to our lack of a culture that would enable us to look after one another, to know, understand and accept one another as we are? If so, what is the remedy for this? What is the way to make up for this cultural lack? Is there a more fundamental way than talking more and listening to one another more?

Is there no way to overcome the environment in Turkey that makes everyone live on their own little island, thus condemning everyone to political incommunication and tension by harboring only bad feelings about the others?

To the Konya STÖs that pursue these questions, the socialist of Jewish origin Roni Margulies, while describing the problems that minorities in Turkey experience, explained that these problems, contrary to what is supposed, do not stem from the Muslims who make up the majority of the population, but from an oppressive understanding of the state that keeps them too under pressure. However, this still does not mean that the Muslim segments bear no responsibility for some understandings and practices that they produce in their own heads about minorities and that from time to time make the world narrow for a minority.

Muslims too can very easily fall into racist approaches that hold Jews all over the world responsible for all the cruelties committed by Israel. Imagining Jews as the principal actors of everything that happens in the world is both incompatible with the facts, and these imaginings are a discourse, unfortunately valid, that damages Muslims' self-confidence excessively and produces excuses for their own failures.

Dr. Necdet Subaşı, who carries out on behalf of the ministry the coordination of the government's work known as the Alevi opening, conveyed to the STÖs of the Islamic segment, with a tremendous two-, even three-sided performance of empathy, both the importance, the necessity and the probable scope of this opening and the perceptions of Alevis toward these opening efforts.

Subaşı is an excellent name chosen for the government's openings on Alevism. He has an extremely altruistic approach that carefully looks after the feelings and sensibilities of even the most marginal segments of Alevis. He receives with understanding even the Alevis' skeptical approaches, at times reaching protests, to the government's initiatives on this matter, and tries to link this to the painful history Alevis have lived. He has no difficulty at all in presenting the Alevis' troubles to a Sunni audience, and of course it should be noted that the audience in the hall also tried to listen to this with great curiosity and interest, with an effort to understand.

Prof. Şaban Çalış also voiced a meaningful question about how far those who carry out the state practices that Alevis complain about today can be described as "Sunni." Frankly, he explained that however "secular" the state may be, Alevis must now give up recording the state's practices that disturb them under the heading of Sunnism.

As we continue to wander in this broad "horizon tour" of cultures of living together, 5th Chamber president Salih Er dropped the following words to the agencies at a ceremony held on the 3rd anniversary of the Council of State attack: "Those who dragged the headscarf issue up to the present day by scratching at it when there was no headscarf problem in Turkey should think today too in the face of this attack."

This once again reminded us of the reality of Turkey's "disconnected little islands."

On the one hand, a civil society that, while possessing social power, tries to learn its responsibilities regarding the existence of other people; on the other, the rigid attitude of those installed in a branch of the state that denies the whole of society.

What a formidable contradiction this is, what a maddening balance!

And whose Turkey's Council of State is this, then?

Is there a Turkey without a headscarf problem that we don't know about? What is it?