The aiders and abettors of terror

We are facing the bloodiest act of terror in the history of the Republic. We lost a great many of our citizens in the terrorist attack in Ankara. There are hundreds of wounded. It is quite clear what those who carried out this attack intend against the nation: they want to destroy society's dynamic of living together and its resilience. In other words, the primary target of the attack is Turkey itself.

This incident has shown once again that the fate of Turkey and the AK Parti are now fused together, because one visible target of this attack is also the AK Parti. As soon as the explosion occurred, the perpetrator of the attack was announced by certain people with their usual air of certainty. It is clear that there is a very serious problem in the manner of this announcement. Everywhere in the world, society unites and closes ranks in the face of terror attacks. In the face of the September 11 attack, the American people met the attack as one body and presented an image of social unity against the terrorists and those behind them. When these attacks took place in France, Spain, Britain and even Russia, it occurred to no one to accuse their own state or one of their own. Had it done so, such a person would doubtless have been perceived as the voice or the perpetrator of the attack against that country. After the funerals have been held and the wounds have been somewhat bound, it is of course a right, even a duty, to ask about the negligence and responsibility of the officials in charge. But allow me, please: first let the funerals be carried out, let condolences be offered, let mourning be observed...

That it is so easy in Turkey to accuse without any basis, and the recklessness of people in this regard, is a clear expression of the fact that they have no intention of living together or of one day resolving the problems between them. These gentlemen do not think of themselves as belonging to this country, or as forming a nation, let alone a society, with the people of this country.

Immediately pointing out a perpetrator after a terror attack in one's own way and trying to get him lynched is nothing other than harvesting political gain from the deaths that have occurred, and serving terror and terrorism. If, right after the attack, while it is still hot, you are singling out targets with nonsensical claims, trying to drag the masses into acts of violence, trying to make hatred and the desire for revenge take root in certain segments of society; that is, if you are trying to divide irresponsibly instead of uniting responsibly, then you should not be bothered by the thought that you are a partner in this terrorist act.

Because this kind of provocative political style is a complement to the terrorist act. Selahattin Demirtaş put his signature on an interesting example of such a situation after the terrible terrorist attack in Ankara, with an accusation that has no counterpart even in the simplest logical mechanism. As if waiting for this very bomb to go off, as if longingly breaking a forced peace fast, Demirtaş used an expression such as "we have no law of brotherhood left." For God's sake, is this what someone who has looked upon the people of this country as brothers even for a single day would say in such an event?

Similarly, a text written in militant language, which gave me the impression of having been penned by someone who embraces the line of Etienne Balibar, was hastily served up on the website of the journal Birikim on the day of the explosion. While criticizing the claims that the explosion was part of a plan to "secure more votes for the HDP," the text condemned as an ethical problem the fact that people displayed such an approach toward the HDP even before "the corpses had been removed." Quite true.. But, as the text itself puts it, the author himself, even before "the corpses have been removed," does not refrain from displaying a baser ethical problem. He identifies the culprit in his own way and tries to set the lynching mechanism in motion. The similar attitudes of certain circles, that is, their hastily declaring the AK Parti guilty and backing this with a rhetoric that would set the culture of political lynching in motion, inevitably give rise to the suspicion that what happened is an organized action directed against the AK Parti.

The author of the provocative text published on Birikim's website concludes as follows: "Every vote given to the AKP on November 1 will have been given to the enemies of democracy and humanity who, holding the HDP's passing the threshold responsible for this nightmare we are living through, have put bloody plans into action or have prepared the suitable ground for them to be realized."

So a man passes on his nature as an inheritance. This is a sentence reminiscent of the level of discourse of those who attempted the coup of February 22 when, in the first election after May 27, the electorate leaned toward the Justice Party. This approach is an extension of the efforts aimed at breaking the democratic resistance that the AK Parti has shown against the attempt to shape Turkey from the outside and to redesign its politics, and at punishing the millions of voters who are trying to stand by this struggle for democracy in the most legitimate way, by voting for the AK Parti.

The publication ban on the incident also seems to have disturbed quite a lot those structures whom they work for is well known. It must not be forgotten that terrorism is a strategy aimed at creating fear and spreading that fear. In a terrorist attack, the deed itself, in the present case the suicide bomber's taking the lives of dozens of our people, remains in a sense symbolic. Because the purpose of a terrorist attack is to widen the base of fear and terror. A terror attack carries no message that reason can grasp; on the contrary, the message it carries appeals purely to archaic emotions. Even if the terrorist has multiplied his bomb with a shrapnel contribution, he multiplies its real effect thousands of times thanks to the shrapnel effects of the mass media that help him. The attack is multiplied by being repeated every day, every hour.

Of course a terrorist activity has news value, and no one takes a stance in favor of obstructing the freedom to receive and report news. However, after a merciless attack that has deeply affected society, it is also impossible to defend a broadcasting policy that paralyzes people's sensibilities and reflexes and causes the threat of fear and violence to spread on a horizontal plane. Those who defend or practice such a broadcasting policy in a clamorous style ultimately serve the same purpose as the terrorists who carried out the attack. Who knows what dirty collaboration, what network, they are a part of.