Enemies of the Turks in the guise of national ones

What happened in Altındağ last week should serve as a sufficient warning about the terrifying dimensions that the tension recently escalated by certain political figures against migrants can reach.

Unfortunately, debates launched with statements that have no rationality and no legal or sociological basis can quickly turn, on the tongues of politicians, into a dangerous hostility toward refugees. Who can own the image that this hostility ultimately produced? Who can look at the face of that tiny child covered in blood and defend what was done as if it were some feat? Who can identify with the vandals there who, having lost their reason, their conscience, their sense, and drawing courage from one another's crowd, hurled the stones in their hands at defenseless women and children who could not retaliate in any way?

This is how it goes, you racist, irresponsible politician! You incite, and then you do not even own up to what those you incited have done; you fall completely silent about what was done. Then, shamelessly, you call for calm and think you will slip out of the affair.

When the leader of a political party says something like that, he must take into account that its echo in society may reach far greater proportions. If he does not feel the responsibility for it, statements that single out a group of people as a target will result in nothing in society other than turning one section of the public into an enemy of another section.

If we recall, the debate on refugees and migrants that has recently escalated began with Kılıçdaroğlu's announcement that he would send the Syrians back when he came to power. That statement of his brought the country to this point; let us admit that it set an agenda.

At this point, what significance does it have that Kılıçdaroğlu said the instrument he would use in sending the Syrians away would be the drum and zurna? Should he not have foreseen that the masses, provoked and set in motion by his words, would grasp only the "send away" part, and that the instrument they would use in the meantime would be vandal violence, stones, clubs and the burning of people? Is it not obvious that on such ground the drum and zurna would not stay as they stand in Kılıçdaroğlu's mouth, and that it was inevitable that it would turn into a bestial lynching?

Unfortunately, while one person killing another is, within the framework of the individuality of crimes, the kind of incident that finds its equivalent every day in Türkiye, in this atmosphere charged with plenty of gas, the fact that the killer was brought to the fore as a "Syrian" instead of as one person, and the victim as a "Turk" instead of as one person, formed a dangerous spark for a social explosion.

The incitements carried out from morning till night at the scene that day by the staff-grade politicians who are enemies of refugees and Syrians, in order to light this spark, are on record. Their role in this incident is far worse than that of some HDP politicians in the events of 6-8 October. There must be a reckoning for inciting feelings of rancor and hatred in one section of the people against another. Moreover, abusing the country's national feelings while doing so must carry a separate penalty.

When they display the fickleness of readily declaring "enemies of the Turks" those who do not join in their hostility toward refugees and who object to it, they do not thereby become better Turks, of course. With their own rancor and hidden agendas, they end up committing the greatest enmity against the Turkish nation. I cannot say they are unaware; there is nothing these people are unaware of; whatever they are doing, they do it knowingly, willingly, with premeditation.

I said it before: a significant portion of these people are not even ethnically Turkish, yet they practice Turkish racism. They are people who came to this country very recently, yet by inciting the people against migrants they are trying to set society against itself. And they display an extraordinary hooliganism in declaring those who do not fall for their incitements and provocations to be enemies of the Turks. Yet with what they do, it is they who display the greatest enmity toward Turkishness and toward this nation.

The greatest service that can be done to Turkishness is to work toward the formation of a climate of feeling, thought and ideal that will keep this nation together with its 85 million people. It is to follow a discourse, a language and a politics that will keep society together in unity and solidarity. Inciting one section of society against another with feelings of rancor and hatred is the greatest enmity that can be committed against the Turks.

We have always seen this enmity from them. From their tongues we have never heard, up to now, a single word of the slightest love, understanding, friendship or selflessness toward the different segments of this society. In return, a constant language of hatred and hostility. When they speak they are angry at everyone, furious with everyone, hostile to everyone. And the easiest label they pin on those who do not share these gross feelings of rancor, hatred and hostility is the accusation of being an "enemy of the Turks."

A perfect reflex of national kharijism. Perhaps national takfirism. For years a series of quests was undertaken for a Turkish Islam; Maturidism, Hanafism, Protestantism, they said, and look at what they finally settled on: national kharijism!

If only the one who scoffs at our Muslimness were at least a Muslim, and the one who curses our Turkishness were at least a Turk.

Yet in Türkiye there is a single and clearest yardstick for telling an enemy of the Turks from a friend of the Turks: whoever incites one section of this nation against another, openly engaging in divisiveness and discrimination against this nation, is the enemy of the Turks, plainly and clearly. For the only thing that damages the fabric of a nation is to aim at its unity and integrity.

Do not be fooled by the way they speak as if constantly owed something, constantly irritable and angry. That posture of being a creditor, that grudge and anger only conceal enmity toward this nation.