The transformation of the paradigm

In an environment that can be idealized for democracy, it is assumed that people's differences of opinion rest on gaps in knowledge. It is thought that disputes stem from differences in information, but that if the differences in information leading to different attitudes on the two sides are removed, the matter can be settled.

This is of course a very naive idea, and in the working mechanism of politics it is frustrated at every opportunity. You see that even on the simplest topics of debate, the debate continues despite indisputable evidence, information and data.

In the debates in the TBMM, convened with a special agenda to discuss the democratic opening, for example, have you ever thought how concrete the information that would remove the uncertainty in the minds of the opposition representatives, who complained about the uncertainty regarding the opening and wanted the opening to become more concrete, could have been? Was the opposition really opposing because it could not understand the process, or, as far as can be understood, was it opposing any stage of the process on the basis of some piece of information?

AK Parti deputy Ömer Çelik, who devoted an important part of his speech to drawing attention to the difference between the past statements of opposition leaders or parties and their present attitudes, was frankly entering the subject from a good place: he was not inviting his interlocutors to take a new attitude on a new subject. On the contrary, he was inviting them merely not to abandon so insistently the line they had long defended on an old subject. Thus he was also giving a kind of comfort guarantee against the trouble of thinking something new in a debate. But even this did not serve to make progress in the debate, because unfortunately, the ideal of deliberative democracy was once again caught in the real line of tension of politics and frustrated.

In the Assembly, where democratic deliberation is supposed to be conducted at the highest level, people can prefer shouting slogans to listening to one another or even to expressing their own views with an argument. Slogans are forms of expression in which debate and the search for truth have ended and people shout out their absolute emotions. The TBMM is perhaps the one place where slogans cannot be shouted, because by its nature it is a setting of full encounter and debate. If things have come to mutual slogan-shouting, it means there is nothing to say, no argument to defend, and no side to be persuaded. There is only an enemy to be put in his place. The Assembly's ceasing to be an arena where the different views in society meet and are deliberated, and turning into a spectator shooting range, is a decline the TBMM does not deserve.

On the other hand, the point reached so far on the democratic opening, in fact, sufficiently expresses that a great turning point has already been passed. If the most important state paradigm that gave rise to the Kurdish question was the denial of Kurds as Kurds, then we have been living for quite some time in a new paradigm in which Kurds are recognized as Kurds. The paradigm changed clearly especially with the establishment of TRT Şeş, and the actual validity of the paradigm in which Kurds are recognized by the state has begun. Later, from the moment the opening of Kurdish Language and Literature chairs within YÖK came onto the agenda, or the restoration of village or city names was voiced, the paradigm even began to consolidate. The items that emerge from the awaited opening package, such as turning human rights into an independent monitoring body, the formation of a commission against discrimination, and the freedom of propaganda in different languages, seem like small steps at this stage only because of comparison with the truly great transformation.

Frankly, from this hour on, in my view, each of the steps to be taken on the solution of the Kurdish question, though of course not unimportant, will remain merely a detail.

The truly great opening has already been experienced as a paradigm transformation. There is great benefit in those who cannot grasp what the opening is merely trying to understand this paradigm transformation.

It is not only the CHP and MHP but also the DTP, which has great expectations of the Kurdish opening, that now needs to take another look at this. Let the opening debates go on; in place of denial, which constitutes the core of the problem, the attitude of "recognition" has already officially taken hold. Without doubt this too is a transformation that will largely remove the difficulty of the next steps. This transformation is the very opening in which those who wish to seek concreteness in the opening can, if they wish, find answers to all their questions.