Intention

Looking at the ways people communicate in political processes, it is impossible not to fall into a serious pessimism with regard to the communicative ideal.

That people expect what they say to have a factual content, and that this content be something intelligible and acceptable to those they address, constitutes the essence of an ordinary communication process.

For this, one of the most basic conditions is, first of all, that the speaker believes in the content of what he says and sincerely tries to convey the meaning of his words to his interlocutor. After that, the person spoken to is perhaps expected to truly understand the words and give his response with an assessment that this meaning deserves.

Jürgen Habermas, one of the famous German sociologists, would probably have described this communication environment as the "ideal speech situation." Yet for Habermas, who spent a significant part of his life pondering how this ideal speech situation could be realized, the political debate environment in Turkey would be a complete disappointment from the standpoint of the "communicative ideal." Because, especially in the constitution-making process, nobody says what they really mean, nor means what they say.

Perhaps, in the atmosphere of political competition, such a divergence between intention and discourse can be regarded as normal tactically, and we may call it "ordinary political communication" and move on. In that case, we can be interested not so much in the semantic content of words as in what they imply from the standpoint of political hermeneutics. But still, we can in any case expect a dialogue to take place in which the speeches are, for better or worse, connected to one another. Yet in this process not even a logical dialogue that could be followed by both sides forms. One of the parties continues to say exactly what is in its own head, whatever the other says.

Actually, don't mind my saying "one of the parties"; the side that consciously and systematically obstructs communication on this matter, having to go to extraordinary lengths to defend voting "no" in the referendum, is the one. Although what is at issue is a deliberation on certain articles of the constitution, persistently steering the subject away from the content toward apricots, pistachios, hazelnuts, künefe and swimming pools shows very well that communication is ultimately a matter of "intention."

This situation in fact reveals a datum that calls for pessimism also about the advanced democratic invention recently called "deliberative democracy." For deliberation to be possible, there must be parties ready to talk and to take into account what the other says. A speech made by disregarding every word said as though it had not been said is not called an answer. When answers do not summon one another and add to one another, no conversation or dialogue comes into being. And especially what happens at rallies, where one produces words in the name of one's rival and answers them on the spot, is, in Habermas's phrase, I suppose, a perfect "distorted communication environment."

There is probably something that even Habermas could not take sufficiently into account: communication is, first of all, a matter of "intention." Unless you open the ear of your heart before your ear, and the eye of your heart before your eye, you cannot keep yourself from interpreting otherwise what your eye sees and your ear hears. Not every sound that reaches our ear, not everything that catches our eye, forms sound knowledge or "understanding" in our mind. One must intend to listen, to understand, to feel.

Unfortunately, this is not as easy as it is to pronounce in a sentence. Intention is, in a sense, the essence of a human being's existence in this world. Human existence is, in a sense, a long and dynamic process that takes place in relation to what one is intent upon.

People's stances toward one another are also a matter of intention, and by this intention they decide in advance what to listen to and what not to listen to from one another. Political differences may have conditioned them, by their intention, not to listen to one another, not to understand even if they listen, and not to refrain from distorting even if they understand. Yet intention does not have to be subject to these differences, to the conditionings of these differences.

The blessing of the month of Ramadan is precisely that it frees this intention and warns us to open the ears of our hearts to listen to others. The intention to fast requires the realization that we are not alone in this world, whether in our individual existence or in our group-factional existence. All dimensions of fasting are directed toward experiencing this selflessness intensely, as an intention.

May the month of Ramadan make our intentions sincere, and may it be blessed.