The problem of robot columnism

In the processes we are living through, we see that a strong tendency prevails that sidelines politics and shuts everyone up in their own camp, ghetto, community, neighborhood. This situation makes debate, mutual understanding, and the agreement that might be hoped for as the result of a conversation difficult, and even impossible. Thinking about one another through clichés is the natural result of this kind of political rancor, but worse, these clichés are increasingly beginning to determine our conceptions of the world as well, and nothing is left in the name of thought and criticism but ready-made, repeatedly used clichés.

A very valued friend of mine said with anguish that the greatest harm the recent processes have done to Turkey is that they have led to a serious loss of altitude at the human, intellectual and moral level. If the matter stopped at a loss of standard at the intellectual level, that would still be fine. Yet we are watching even people who could be considered extremely intellectual being swept increasingly into the language and moral level of the ordinary brawling atmosphere.

Although politics being a friend-enemy relationship is a truth hard to accept, it does not legitimize every kind of immorality against the enemy. Seeing that actors within the media invent or voice certain reports and claims knowing them to be lies leads to a mental and spiritual contamination, not only in the one who does it but also in the one exposed to it. Alongside this loss of standard, with which we were already familiar to a degree in the media, the contribution made by the parallel media, breaking all records, is causing a quite different destruction. After all, involved in this are the theologies of hizmet, himmet, tolerance, cause, golden generation that have been on everyone's lips for years.

There is also a type of robot authorship that this kind of lack of standard has produced. Lately there is a piece, written word for word by dozens of writers, with the same quotations from the same people, the same sentences and the same arguments. A piece that reveals the reality of robot columnism alongside robot trolls.

If you go on Google for a moment and enter the words "Öcalan, Yalçın Akdoğan, Bülent Arınç, Yasin Aktay, Beşir Atalay," you will see for yourself what kind of example I am talking about. Perhaps you may also try counting how many different people passing as columnists have repeated more or less the same piece word for word. The piece consists of a compilation of the positive statements that writers and politicians such as Abdülkadir Selvi, Hilal Kaplan, Sadullah Ergin and Orhan Miroğlu have previously made about Abdullah Öcalan. A conclusion is certainly drawn from this compilation as well: all of these names are admirers of Öcalan, and all of them are treasonous words showering praise on Öcalan.

For example, Akdoğan is said to have said, "Öcalan has the ability to read events. His messages reflect a sensitivity that thinks about the future of the process." Beşir Atalay and others said more or less similar things, especially on the occasion of the 2013 Nevruz message. And I am said to have said: "Öcalan reads the future well. He has set new targets before the PKK (disarmament and politicization). He has demands for the improvement of his conditions; these demands are legitimate."

The others are more or less similar statements. Quotations made especially on the occasion of the Nevruz message and, many of them, torn from their context. But even so, it is very interesting that the collage formed by putting these words together was consumed in the same package by nearly thirty columnists.

In fact, this collage-making borders on plagiarism. Whoever did it first should hold the copyright, but I think we can no longer even determine who that was. Is it not a serious problem, do you not think, that columnists' completing their pieces with a ready-made collage placed before them has become so widespread? People want to read original pieces from a columnist, but our lazy columnists serve the reader the same piece under different signatures without expending any mental effort.

Who is not on the list! A broad list of columnists, from Abdülhamit Bilici at the Zaman newspaper to İhsan Yılmaz and a few others, to Nazlı Ilıcak at the Bugün newspaper, to many writers at Yeni Mesaj and the Ortadoğu newspaper, used this ready-made collage word for word. All of them asking, "Look how they praise Öcalan!", a question that is thoroughly cheap and takes its reader for a fool. Go ahead and measure for yourselves who has been made a fool of in the end.

Yet, although I consider it a disgrace, let me say it anyway from this point on: to count the quoted words as praise of Öcalan, one must be either mentally impaired or terribly ill-intentioned. To say that Öcalan is a better politician than the HDP members, or even the CHP members or other politicians, or that he reads the future better, does not mean that Öcalan is being praised or that sympathy is felt for him.

Since these pieces are generally served up by the parallelist media, let me explain in the language they understand: such sentences that I have uttered about Fethullah Gülen are certainly far more numerous than those I have uttered about Öcalan.

For example, I have even said that Gülen is a genius. But I can add that his genius, at this hour, increases his responsibility and the weight of the crimes he is committing even more. To say that Gülen is very intelligent, that he can maneuver very well, that he has very good oratory points to only one of his attributes. In the end, none of these statements prevents one from identifying and saying the evil and treason he is committing against Turkey with his organization and all these attributes together.

These statements said about Öcalan too, let no one try to pull them elsewhere, do not prevent identifying that he is at the same time a selfish, collaborationist person who betrays Turkey.

I also apologize separately to my readers for lowering the level of explanation this much in order to explain better.