Between Tophane and Beşiktaş…

According to a report carried yesterday only in the newspapers Taraf and Zaman, a "group of 15 people alleged to be members of the CHP's Youth Branches carried out an attack" on the exhibition titled "Free Zone İstanbul," organized by the Bimeras Culture Foundation in Beşiktaş Square. The reason for the attack was given as a reaction to a work created by adding a picture of Atatürk next to the sign, shown at airports as a place of worship, symbolizing the three major religions. The exhibition containing the panel was opened by Rosan Bosch and Rune Fjord, designers with an international reputation in their field, for İstanbul. What provoked the reaction of the CHP's youth was "the expression of the fact that Kemalism (Atatürkçülük) is understood and lived like a kind of religion."

Naturally, this incident recalled the Tophane attack, which was not yet a month old. There is of course a great difference between the nature of this incident and the attack the neighborhood residents carried out on art galleries in Tophane a month ago, but although there is no difference at the level of perception, the difference between the reactions shown to the two incidents is very telling. This difference in reaction, which immediately sets off the "double standard" criticisms I never favor, undoubtedly deserves far more than that. We cannot see on this stage a single one of those who immediately declared the Tophane incident "a bigoted and vandal attack on art" and, as if that were not enough, as if exploiting the first were not enough, set out to produce a second Madımak tragedy; this is an important difference.

Yet the Tophane attack was never an attack on art; on the contrary (although it cannot be excused for whatever purpose it was carried out), the cause of the incident must nevertheless be stated correctly: it was a reaction by neighborhood residents to a disturbing sight that had spilled onto their streets. Although there are restaurants serving alcohol and markets selling alcohol all over the district, and among the attackers there were also people who have made alcohol a way of life, a race began to present the incident as a movement against alcohol or art and to obtain ideological rent from it.

Yet if a real attack on art is being sought, it is exactly the incident that took place in Beşiktaş. In Tophane it was very clear that the attackers had no connection (reaction) whatsoever to the art displayed there. Indeed, had they had the characteristics attributed to them, it was quite probable that they would have found very sympathetic the iconoclastic (idol-breaking) messages of the art displayed in exhibitions like Extramücadele, which was subjected to the attack. To repeat, the Tophane attack can never be tolerated, but when we interpret its causes correctly, it is clear that the result was a reaction neither to art nor to alcohol. In the Beşiktaş attack, however, the target is directly art.

A message conveyed by a work of art, as long as it contains no insult, does not deserve such a reaction. Drawing attention to love of Atatürk being understood like worship is not an insult, indeed from one angle it is not even criticism, and in many cases it can be seen as a statement of fact that Kemalists would like.

The famous Kemalist Kemalettin Kamu, who proposed leaving "the Kaaba to the Arabs and Çankaya to us," did not neglect to describe "loving Atatürk as a national act of worship." Looking at the Atatürk iconography expressed by many of his contemporaries or the writers and politicians after him, it is impossible not to get this impression.

In essence, relations with anyone considered exempt from every kind of criticism and beyond dispute in what he said and did fall directly within the scope of worship, and people should be entirely free to establish or not establish this relationship. It is a healthy thing for those who, having positioned themselves as opposed to religion, mythology, metaphysics and belief, finally realize that their relationship with science, with the Enlightenment, or with Atatürk also falls within this scope to experience a shock. But it is not always easy to predict what kind of reaction this shock will result in.

The criticisms Can Dündar was subjected to over his film, which tries to portray Atatürk as a human being, that is, as "Mustafa" isolated from the "Kemal" construct, and the perception of Atatürk revived by these criticisms, do not depict a leader to be understood, reflected upon, and whose politics or movement model is to be evaluated. On the contrary, they draw the portrait of a non-worldly model belonging rather to the religious world, whose every word is to be accepted unconditionally, loved and worshipped. The interesting thing is that a Kemalism full of these feelings perceives this observation as an insult. I think this needs to be dwelt on, perhaps with some psychological support.

An officiousness that announced to the whole world what happened in Tophane as the neighborhood's pressure on the whole of Turkey met what happened in Beşiktaş, to stay in Beşiktaş, with complete non-reaction. Yet between Tophane and Beşiktaş there are only two stops. I wonder what changes when you pass these two stops?