We were going to see this in the end too

May God bless our lives; it seems we were fated to see this too in the end.

After the statement issued by the MGK (National Security Council), which supported the "democratic opening" activities the government is carrying out and strongly recommended their continuation, CHP officials this time directed the arrows of their criticism at the military wing of the Council. It was judged that the military acts without knowing the content of these initiatives presented as a "democratic opening."

What is it a sign of that the CHP, which has never been disturbed by the weight of the military in political life, and which has even always allotted it the most important share in its own equation of power, has on this occasion come face to face with the army? Of having parted ways with the army? Of the fact that from now on it will rely for power not on the army but on its own politics?

Without doubt, if there is to be such a result, then in spite of everything it would be a beneficial outcome for the development of our democracy. True, there is in these criticisms the disappointment of having lost the army fortress as well to the AK Parti government, from which it had most recently lost the Çankaya fortress.

However, on this occasion the MHP too adopted an attitude that profanes all the sacred domains relating to the state. Bahçeli not only began to refrain no longer from criticizing the military, but also declined the President's invitation to a briefing on the subject, although he regards the President, as head of the state, as someone toward whom respect must in any case never be lacking.

Even if the opening has become a state policy, the will to resist it emerging in both Bahçeli and Baykal is, frankly, not an attitude that needs to be criticized immediately at first hand. In fact, there is nothing as healthy as the profanation of the state's will.

Well then, why am I raising this? For this reason:

This situation gives a very interesting example of how the hidden power established over the political sphere until now by means of sanctified discourses such as "state policy," "national unity and solidarity," "the understanding of the unitary state," "secularism," "the republic" and "martyrs" works.

It is always suggested that the sole owner or the determining actor of the established power is the army. Yet the share of the armed forces, the visible greatest wielder of force, in producing this ideological or political power is at the lowest level; on the contrary, this ideology is produced from outside and works through a mechanism that brings the army too into the union.

The famous French thinker Michel Foucault, in explaining his theory of power, which brought a path-breaking opening to political science, describes the situation thus: "Everyone supposes that power is a mechanism applied from top to bottom, whereas in most cases power is a mechanism that works from bottom to top."

Even if everyone believes, when left alone with themselves, that ideology is a body of nonsensical assumptions, everyone has agreed on the continuation of this nonsense, and over time the parties tend to establish pressure and power over one another through it.

Even if it is believed to be absurd, an exclusionary pressure is established over those who show laxity in their commitment to the ideology. Yet, over time, people may still come to believe faithfully in the content which they knew at the start to have been concocted as a ceremonial formality.

In this case it is seen that power does not consist merely of a despotism applied from top to bottom. Those who hold the force are the owners of power in appearance, but the whole content and limits of this power are defined, watched over and supervised by their own subjects themselves.

It is precisely like "worshipping idols one has fashioned with one's own hands"; they are nothing but invented names, and in essence everyone is being pushed into a very narrow world.

But of course, this narrow world does not remain merely ideology as a field of common delusion; it also creates a common order of sharing. As the questioning of ideology threatens this order of sharing as well, corresponding defense reflexes come into play as a mechanism that renews and protects power.

The reactions of the MHP and CHP to the military amount, for now, to a simple reproach, and say in short this: We were getting along nicely by sharing nicely; what is this spoilsport business?

Yet there is no spoilsport business here; their problem stems from not being aware that the ideological power they know so well has dissolved and a newer, more open discursive world has been established, and that, correspondingly, the old order of sharing has come to an end.