The politicization of alcohol

The findings of Prof. Dr. Ömer Çaha's research on the referendum results, which breaks with stock assumptions, were published a few days ago in the newspaper Star. As far as I could follow, no one other than Kürşat Bumin of our own newspaper wrote about this research. Yet, as I said, the results were announced in the news report as "breaking stock assumptions." Should we attribute this lack of reaction to the fact that nobody has any concern about their own stock assumptions?

Foremost among the assumptions said to have been broken is the claim that those who said "yes" to the constitutional amendment are at a lower level in terms of education, whereas those on the "no" side are more "educated," which was indeed one of the most repeated claims after the referendum. The comparison Çaha made on the basis of TÜİK data shows that there is no significant difference in education level between those who said "yes" and those who said "no."

Truly, although the figures Çaha gives may be seen as ignorable, some other observations show that there is a strangely inverse correlation between the level of education in Turkey and the adoption of democratic values. That is, as the level of education rises, a decline is recorded in the adoption of democratic values.

This situation also emerges in other research I have carried out personally. This is in fact not a strange result at all when the curriculum of education in Turkey is taken into consideration. The Turkish education system is far from instilling values such as tolerance and empathy toward those who are different from oneself. On the contrary, a megalomania that spreads from the Turkish nation down to one's own individual existence is imparted carelessly. When children who grow up with an understanding that founds its own history in the language of mythology and depicts its historical figures as equivalent to mythological heroes are cast into life, they are far removed from realities and have overshot the limits of the reasonable by miles.

That is why a negative relationship between education level and democratic and humane values becomes evident. In that case, it would in fact not be surprising at all for "no" votes to come out significantly higher among the educated.

Another approach in Çaha's research that breaks with stock assumptions concerns some indicators pointing to lifestyles. On going more to the cinema or theater or on smoking, there is likewise no significant difference between İzmir, one of the provinces where "no" votes were highest, and Konya, one of the provinces where "yes" votes were highest. Conservative segments also go to the cinema and theater and smoke.

In Çaha's research the significant difference between the two segments appears on alcohol and on prayer and fasting. A significantly large proportion of those who said yes perform prayer and keep the fast, and they also drink alcohol at significantly lower rates.

Starting from these data, Kürşat Bumin rightly finds it disheartening that the determining element of politics has been turned into a "strange" criterion such as "drinking alcohol," instead of much more real measures in line with worldwide trends, such as class, education and identity. But I think we also cannot ignore that this element, which is disheartening for me too, is increasingly acquiring a symbolic character and is therefore being made an indicator of an identity and thereby "politicized." Let us recall how alcohol has been placed at the center of all the debates, from Refah Partisi municipal administration to the 28 February memorandum, from the neighborhood pressure debates to the headscarf-alcohol symbolism in officers' clubs. If the headscarf is the instrument in which the freedom struggle of the Islamic community became symbolized, then that of the Kemalist-secularists is "alcohol."

"The politicization of alcohol." I am aware that it sounds strange even as I say it. So it is indeed hard to explain to others, but it is becoming increasingly hard to believe that the root of the conflict in Turkey is class-based. As has been voiced on various occasions before, the members of the high judiciary, accused of elitism or of being the owners of the center, and even the members of the military bureaucracy who make the authority of the state speak at every opportunity, are in the end middle-class people who live on their salaries. Would it not at times be illuminating to ask which class superiorities these people are trying to protect? Whereas the people of the periphery against whom they protect the center are at more or less the same class level. When you make the comparison at every level, you will see that the matter has long since moved far away from being a class fight.

Of course, it is not possible to reduce political antagonism entirely to the axis of "drinking or not drinking alcohol." Of course not everything is done for the sake of drinking alcohol. But let us admit that alcohol is an act that, within a tension running along the axis of lifestyles rather than the axis of class, is becoming increasingly symbolic and, as it becomes symbolic, tends to be perceived as the sole cause of everything. Do not the shadows of political symbols that fall in the middle of the fight always work like this? Making one forget the real cause of the fight...

When it comes to alcohol, making one forget the real cause of the fight, when overdone, is in any case in the nature of its own being.