Addressing the camera… a Bahçeli speech in Tunceli

The debate on Dersim and Alevism took on a quite different and interesting shape once Devlet Bahçeli got involved. No, Kılıçdaroğlu's contribution, that is, the contributions that Kılıçdaroğlu, with his own singular personality, has made or refrained from making to the Dersim debates, was enough to make the subject interesting and meaningful enough.

Every ordinary person expects Kılıçdaroğlu, as an Alevi from Dersim, to be pleased with the government's Dersim opening and with the apology President Erdoğan offered on behalf of the state over Dersim during his time as prime minister, and to pursue a politics that responds to it. That, instead of giving this expected answer, Kılıçdaroğlu holds his head up and whistles, and trails after the nationalists within his party, shows that he is not comfortable enough.

The Dersim file, which Erdoğan started and Prime Minister Davutoğlu has reopened more forcefully these days, produces new surprise reactions on every page. Kılıçdaroğlu, who grew up as the child of a Dersim family, has shown that in his political struggle he has no account whatsoever to be settled over the massacre and oppression that took place in Dersim. On the contrary, by opening these files he has in a way also declared that he will let no one touch the CHP's record.

By doing so, he must have preferred to keep quite far away from the problems of the Alevis in Turkey, and from their memory and recollections. Otherwise, is Dersim not as important for Alevis as is supposed?

On this there are two important pieces of data. The first is that Kılıçdaroğlu has lost Tunceli in return for this indifference he has shown, as a Dersimite, toward the Dersim cause. The Tunceli of how many years did not choose, for the first time, a CHP led by an Alevi chairman, and it is now governed by the HDP.

The second piece of data is that in the remaining regions the votes of Alevis have remained concentrated in the CHP, despite Kılıçdaroğlu's discourse that takes on and justifies the CHP's massacre in Dersim. This is undoubtedly a situation that needs to be understood and explained..

Be that as it may. Whether it is the Alevi opening or the Dersim opening, these are processes that must be completed without any vote calculation. There are Alevis in Turkey, and they want to be different and want their being different to be known. In parallel with globalization, "recognition" of one's own identity has become one of the most decisive factors of politics in the world.

The politics of recognition is at the same time a politics of difference, of differentiation. Attaching importance to differentiation is not something only Alevis demand; it is a widespread political tendency. In the new world, politics rests on seeing these demands for difference and responding to them, or managing them, while also keeping an eye on a certain level of stability. No one has the right to impose an identity on Alevis or on others who claim difference.

There is no doubt about this any longer. But this does not mean that those who pursue identity politics do not exert pressure on their own potential constituencies by over-emphasizing their differences. Even if the politics of difference takes the dominant power, the state or society as its addressee, in order to assert its strength it tries to give the impression that it speaks on behalf of a certain mass. Of course, to secure this mass support, pressures within the community, neighborhood pressures, or, as in the Kurdish issue in particular, if weapons are involved too, the persuasive capacity of direct violence come into play as well.

No one has the right to define Alevism from the outside. This is absolutely true, but if Alevism cannot be defined from the outside, does any Alevi gain the right to define it as he wishes simply because he is inside, and to impose this definition on other Alevis?

One must also see how those who speak in the name of identities construct original identities in the name of the politics of difference and try to impose them on a certain mass. Undoubtedly the masses may openly receive such identity constructions as an offer. As long as there is no violence and threat, politics is also a process of offer and acceptance.

Bahçeli's extreme opposition to Davutoğlu's Dersim initiative, to tell the truth, struck me as much more interesting than Kılıçdaroğlu's. His outburst in Dersim, saying that Seyyid Rıza was a terrorist, also says that his loyalty to the concept of the state has no traceable, meaningful line.

I mean, if the state is something whose every act is to be sanctified and accepted, then the ones running the state at this moment too are Erdoğan and Davutoğlu, the AK Parti. By this logic, what is the meaning of his opposing so fiercely these figures who are determining state policy?

With what heroism can Bahçeli take on the Dersim massacre, which even CHP members these days dare not take on because of Kılıçdaroğlu's embarrassed Alevism.

When he described Seyyid Rıza as a terrorist and the prime minister said, "If you have the courage, go and tell these in Tunceli," I was not without worry. This Bahçeli might turn the matter into a show of courage, go to Tunceli too, and repeat these words there, as if cursing people.

And indeed he went.

But what a going it was. Accompanied by extraordinary security measures, he made his speech addressing three or five people and the camera. But after that speech he could neither walk the streets nor visit the Cemevi.

To risk this provocation merely to show that he could go to Tunceli did not at all befit Devlet Bahçeli, a statesman whom we too admire from time to time.

No, I mean, if you can really go, we wish wholeheartedly that you would. It is good for the integration and embrace of the country, but not like this.