Zülfü Livaneli's restlessness and Mustafa Armağan's freedom of expression

It seems there is a market for lies, in which both the buyer and the seller enter the trade knowing that it is a "lie." Looking at the discourses developing about Islamophobia in our world, you have no difficulty at all understanding what use the lies bought and sold in this market, lovingly and ornately produced and prepared until they are brought to it, serve.

To understand these crude lies that have kept the Middle East under control for a century, sociologists, communication scholars and political scientists wear themselves out more than necessary and set about ideology and discourse analyses. Everything is carried out in its crudest form, and once power is gathered in one hand, that power does not even need a very refined form of lie. The crudest form is enough to save appearances.

Why does democracy supposedly not develop in the Islamic world? Is its relation to Islamic culture this, or is it that? Do you think they care? Because they never let democracy fall from their tongues, you would think they are dying for "democracy," and you would think they very much want democracy to develop in the Islamic world. For this they occupied Iraq, and under the pretext of the democracy they promised to bring, they left millions of people homeless, without shelter, without life, unquiet. Shouldn't the "unrest" that the anti-imperialist, socialist Livaneli ought to have written about have been this, above all else?

Is there a Livaneli today who asks them what kind of thing the democracy they brought to Iraq is, or why it is so late?

Doesn't it occur to you to say, "Let's not ask even such a question, so as not to bring yet another trouble on Iraq"?

In reality, even though Turkey is DAESH's number one enemy, even though the lie that Turkey helped DAESH and sheltered it is a lie falling apart at every seam, when they need it, a buyer is ready. At first they produced and sold quite a lot of this goods through FETÖ. I suppose Zülfü Livaneli, having seen this goods overly peddled in the market and become thoroughly cheap, tried to peddle it once more at the evening market in a novel-literature package. Well, it is the evening market; the goods are not going to stay on hand. Livaneli failed to calculate that the need for this goods would quickly run out by the time he received the order. As for his not knowing what use this lie serves while producing it, that is impossible.

Orhan Miroğlu, showing courtesy all the same, set about ideology and discourse analysis and said, "Unfortunately it has become an ideological text that severs the reader from the sense of reality." That a narrative that would give rise to even the implication that Turkey supports DAESH has no result beyond lying, beyond serving the imperialists who are the buyers of this lie and who are building the ugliest calculations over our country, he cannot not know.

At the same time, as a native of Mardin and an intellectual who can tell a good novel and literature well, Miroğlu rightly reacted as follows:

"Livaneli, whose novels I have read with pleasure and whose songs I get lost in while listening, has unfortunately produced, in his latest novel Huzursuzluk, an ideological text that severs the reader from the sense of reality. I read it in one breath because it tells of Mardin, but the Mardin described here unfortunately has no connection with the real Mardin. A novel is of course not reality itself, but this does not mean the freedom of anyone who wishes to pick up a pen and describe Mardin as a DAESH paradise. According to the novel, DAESH militants roam the streets in groups and rain bullets on the hero of the novel because he married a Yazidi girl! Yet I remember the opposite: in the events of 6-7-8 October, people were lynched in the middle of the street and burned in their vehicles just because they had beards.

Mr. Livaneli is a writer of world stature, a UNESCO envoy, and we too are trying to bring Mardin together with the world UNESCO heritage; if the 'Envoy' describes Mardin like this, how will we explain ourselves to the decision-makers at UNESCO? It is not pleasant to curse a novel, but for Mardin I take this risk too: God willing, 'Huzursuzluk' will not be translated into other languages, and with this unreal novel it will be just us, left to ourselves among ourselves.. If only a Mardin native had also described the real Mardin to Mr. Livaneli in the kasre kanco he visited.."

MUSTAFA ARMAĞAN'S FREEDOM

OF EXPRESSION AND ATATÜRK

Last week a strange thing happened that should by now have been left behind in the old Turkey. Our friend Mustafa Armağan, Editor-in-Chief of Derin Tarih Magazine, was sentenced to 1 year and 3 months in prison on the grounds of violating Law No. 5816, the "Law on the Protection of Atatürk." Because he translated into Turkish a letter or news item belonging to Atatürk's wife Latife Hanım, published in the 21 February 1926 issue of the Boston Sunday Advertiser, and published it in Derin Tarih magazine.

Insulting Atatürk, or any historical figure, or even any living person, is of course in no way acceptable. In fact, regarding discourses that belittle historical figures, the Qur'an's warning, "they were a generation that came and passed; theirs is what they earned and yours is what you earn, and you will not be asked about what they did," draws the limits sufficiently.

In fact, efforts undertaken to discredit historical figures make no serious contribution to the present day. But this does not prevent presenting findings about historical facts without resorting to any insult and without any effort to discredit. Trying to protect a historical figure with a special law in the face of the likelihood of his frequently being insulted does nothing but put up a barrier in front of historical examination, criticism and research. On this occasion it has once again been seen that Law No. 5816 has built an entirely separate taboo zone in front of history in Turkey.

Because there is absolutely no insult to Atatürk in what Armağan did. To derive an insult from having translated a letter or news item of Latife Hanım faithfully to the original is an insanely touchy oversensitivity in Atatürk's name, and does not serve sound knowledge about Atatürk but rather puts a brake on it. Clear and plain.

Moreover, it has never been seen that laws enacted to protect a person protect that person from insult or further increase that person's respectability. Producing mythologies around his name and creating halos of sanctity does not make him more understandable, and it harms, before anyone else, those who love him.

Let people try to see and understand Atatürk first of all as a historical figure, as a human being.