Turkey is not exempt from the rules of sociology

The success Türkiye has shown so far in the struggle against the coronavirus, one of the most exceptional global crises of our age, has made it stand out across the whole world. In this performance, which from the start emerged with the most brilliant example of harmony between state and society, it has become plainly evident on this occasion how far ahead of the entire world the health system Türkiye has been developing for years is.

That the world's most advanced countries in weapons, pharmaceutical, and information technologies had made no investment to transfer these gains to mass health services has burst out as a scandal.

In the meantime, it has also been seen who is truly working to keep human beings alive and who is working only to rule over people and kill them. It is not hard to predict that, with its life-sustaining policies, Türkiye will shine even more in the world to come and will be a source of inspiration for new models of politics.

Besides its policies that keep human beings alive, Türkiye's having secured harmony, participation, and unity between state and society in this process constitutes a separate and important aspect of its successful performance. In this respect, Türkiye's ability to send medical aid to more than 40 countries while providing this medical equipment to its own people free of charge makes it stand out as the strongest country in the world during this global crisis.

On the other hand, it was of course no surprise that Türkiye, which declared that it did not need the IMF aid to which at least more than 70 countries have applied, drew the opposition's criticism by launching the #BizBizeYeteriz campaign and asking its own people for help.

The critics who begin with "While all the countries of the world help their people, Türkiye, while rushing to the aid of more than 40 countries of the world, gives its own people an IBAN..." know nothing about the society, nothing about the world, nothing about what Türkiye is really trying to do.

They know nothing about the world, because they evidently have not understood what else this crisis will bring about. The waves that deeply shake the world's largest economies have already begun to strike.

They know nothing about what other countries are doing; some of the richest countries in the world, like Kuwait and Germany, also ran these donation campaigns and collected considerable aid.

Third, they know nothing about what Türkiye is doing. What is being carried out in Türkiye is, as the name says, a "donation campaign," and not a penny is taken, nor has been taken, from anyone by force. Whoever wants gives, whoever doesn't want doesn't. We are in a situation in which being a society full of people who sleep full while their neighbor is hungry has appeared to the extreme. In this crisis there are plenty of cases in which those who have the luxury of sitting at home with some security and people who live on their daily earnings go hungry when they sit at home. May God give our state strength, power, and wealth, and may it reach them all, so be it. But when this trial we face comes in a situation where people show no compassion to one another, where the people living in society do not truly feel themselves like the organs of one body, it cannot be a trial that any state could bear with strength and endurance. What the state needs here is not money but that people remember and feel their individual responsibilities in this process, and this has been largely achieved.

Let those who withhold their money in this matter and therefore rail against the state go on living, if they wish, in their own selfishness far from compassion; how far, though?

Meanwhile, in the process that Türkiye is carrying out with great success, an incident not commensurate with this performance took place after the curfew announced last Friday. These events did not fit Türkiye's general appearance up to now at all, and are in fact an injustice to Türkiye's general condition. For Türkiye truly was not this. But even in this matter we need to remember that Türkiye is, in the end, not a society exempt from the general rules of sociology.

When it comes to the rules of sociology, however, we must immediately remember that it is not possible to make very clear, definite predictions. Sociologists have devised all sorts of models of how individuals will behave when society finds itself in situations like this in particular. All the models keep oscillating between the possibility that individuals, acting by mathematical calculations or by their own selfish interests, may drag society into disaster, and the possibility that they may take into account that the society's disaster will be their own disaster too.

There are examples like these, for instance:

1. There is a water shortage and citizens are urged to cut their water consumption. If every citizen responds to this request thinking of his own interest, no one will stockpile water. Clearly, the hoarding done by each individual has an insignificant effect on the city's supply, but it is a fact that there will be impropriety. On the other hand, if everyone acts in his own interest, the results will be a disaster for everyone.

2. If everyone does not pay his taxes, the functioning of the state may collapse. Likewise, if every person, himself included, prefers that everyone pay his taxes, there remains no one who does not pay his taxes. Of course, the best thing for the individual is for everyone except himself to pay taxes. But when everyone thinks this way, it is again a disaster.

3. After many years of overproduction, farmers decide to voluntarily cut back their crops so that prices will rise. But no farmer produces with the aim of influencing prices, so each begins to produce as much as he can and to sell what he has produced whatever it fetches, and a further layer of overproduction arises (Margaret M. Poloma, Contemporary Sociological Theories, trans. Hayriye Erbaş).

In this case, could what happened on Friday have been foreseen in advance? If two days rather than two hours had been given, would the time during which people flowed into the markets and made high contact have been spread over two days and led to the close contact of 3-4 million people instead of 250 thousand? No one can know this.

What really makes mathematics' job difficult in sociology is cultural differences in this matter and the fact that people do not always behave rationally. When fears and anxieties begin to direct behavior, sociology of course does not stand idle either; it takes a fitting approach to that as well.