Biden's Ten Ambassadors

It is quite natural that the stance President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan took on initiating "persona non grata" procedures against the ambassadors of ten countries has found a significant echo all over the world. Such a stance, as radical and unprecedented as possible, never seen before either in Türkiye or anywhere in the world, suddenly turned all eyes to Türkiye.

It is clear that there is a customer base quite ready to buy this as a concrete example of Erdoğan's increasingly arbitrary rule. Yet no one can say that the incident that caused this stance of Erdoğan's is an everyday occurrence either.

What is truly exceptional, and never seen in the history of world diplomacy, is the ambassadors of ten countries gathering like the militants of a political party or movement and issuing a joint statement on some matter of a country. Ambassadors are obliged to represent their own countries in the best way in the country where they are posted and to establish the best dialogue between their own countries and the host country. It is far more meaningful to ask what led them to exceed these customs and take such a radical, extraordinary, exceptional step. For what caused Erdoğan's seemingly extraordinary reaction, and in a sense left Erdoğan no other option, is this over-the-line, excessively politicized, extraordinary move itself.

AN OVERLY POLITICIZED CASE

I am not even looking at the justification for this politicization. But my personal view is that the Osman Kavala matter, cited as the justification for this move, has already been politicized more than necessary. It is quite clear that this politicization has long since taken his case out of being a judicial matter. The environment for a fair trial regarding the charges attributed to him has been thoroughly distorted.

On the one hand, in this country or in any democratic country, everyone has the right to oppose the government, and the right to do so in the most radical manner within legal limits, within limits that do not resort to violence or support those who resort to violence. No one can be accused or tried for exercising this right.

On the other hand, it is impossible not to see that campaigns conducted in this way for Kavala also have the effect of further spoiling the atmosphere of fair justice. Is the ten countries' ambassadors taking such an action, moreover under the direction of Biden, whose plan to overthrow Erdoğan with so-called "democratic actors" has become obvious, a support for Kavala, or his being badly used in a bad scenario?

However ideal the designs or struggles you wage regarding the judiciary, in the end you run into the tragic human element. The human, that is, not the sovereign-subject human designed by the humanists, but the human with his political side, his feelings, his subjectivity, his weaknesses.

Of course all institutionalizations and quests for impersonal positive law aim to eliminate this human dimension, but at the end of the day it is seen that one cannot go beyond taking two steps forward and one step back. Only in Türkiye? Of course not. In its most institutionalized form, does the ECtHR act independently of politics, subjectivity, the human element, ideology? Within that system itself there are a host of assessments that it is in complete bankruptcy in terms of producing fair judgment.

DO THESE AMBASSADORS CARE ABOUT KAVALA?

Meanwhile, it cannot have gone uncalculated how such an intervention, which practically puts Türkiye in the position of a colony, would be perceived in Türkiye and that this act would leave Erdoğan no option other than giving such a reaction. Otherwise, within the framework of its relations with the EU, Türkiye's judicial process is already open to the EU's scrutiny. The ECtHR already conveys its view to Türkiye in the clearest way on this or that matter, exclusively on the Kavala case as well. This is accepted by both sides. But one would have to be blind not to see that there is another calculation beyond Kavala behind going past this level and turning the Kavala matter into a reason for an ambassadors' uprising. The ambassadors' concern is not freedom for Kavala but settling their scores with Erdoğan through him. They are aware that by doing so they have made the Kavala case even more inextricable, and they do not care.

WOULD THESE AMBASSADORS NOT FIND THEIR WAY TO EGYPT, SYRIA, ISRAEL?

If their concern were truly human rights and democracy, why did we not see them in solidarity for the Palestinian journalists, writers and politicians held for decades without trial, under the worst conditions, in Israel's prisons? Are Türkiye's prisons so much worse than those, and are the situations so much more urgent?

Yesterday Resul Tosun of the Star newspaper wrote them one by one. Why, for example, when Egypt's first and only elected president was thrown into a cell and left to die in the courtroom, did they not feel the need to make a one-line statement? Or why, right now, when again tens of thousands of detainees have been left to die under the harshest conditions without trial, do we not hear a single word about them?

Why, for example, while the Assad regime massacres thousands of people and holds thousands of women hostage in prisons, do these states not think of law and human rights?"

Do these examples not reveal far more urgent situations in terms of human rights and values, in terms of democracy?

Of course, even so, a single person unjustly deprived of freedom is certainly a serious problem, and ignoring a call about a problem is never permissible. But does the solution of these problems fall to the ambassadors of these shameless states, which are themselves the cause and supporter of every kind of anti-democratic coup order, autocratic regime and human rights violation in these lands?