Brand-new news from history

There is probably no other society in which recent history is followed with as much interest as in ours. Everything written about history, but especially about recent history, touches, shakes and shocks a rote-learned belief of ours. Because every new piece of information we learn about history touches an existing piece of information, it becomes the subject of intense debates, even quarrels and divisions. A historical piece of information or document put forward does not end the debate on a given subject; on the contrary, it deepens people's divisions in the face of that document too.

This function of documents turns out somewhat strange, truly, but it confronts us again with this familiar reality. Namely: people do not divide because of their information; they divide before information, and they choose which information and documents to credit according to the camps they have divided into. That is why, however much we long for an ideal level of communication at which debates would end and information and documents could speak, that level remains one of the most unattainable utopias concerning humankind. Even when the documents expected to be the most convincing are presented to each other, people are seen to go on arguing. This situation is a tragic human condition showing that reason and information never work in their pure and unalloyed forms. Indeed, those who can act knowing this human condition can become more open to the realities that documents pour out.

By its nature, history is a field very prone to reflecting human division. Because history is, to begin with, a story of the past agreed upon with the collective identity of a certain community, and this story has very little to do with what actually happened in the past. When the perception of the past is collectively constructed and accepted, we call it history. It need not have happened to individuals one by one; through history one joins a field of acceptance as to how the past is to be perceived together and jointly. That is why putting forward different stories about history is a risky business, because it is felt as an objection to this collective being. Since the common perception of the past fulfills a function that builds the group, attempts that question it are not welcomed with much sympathy. Yet if there are some injustices and distortions in the founding of the present reality, one way out of them also runs through questioning the common perception of the past.

Leaving the more distant history aside, attempts at re-reading recent history both show that today's order no longer works and, the more today's social or political order falters, increase interest in the recent past all the more. It is not for nothing that we call it "confronting"; because without making that confrontation we cannot fix the present. The greater the injustices on which our present is constructed, the more fabricated stories we have about our past. The worst of it is that stories of an absurdity that children could not believe have been made to be adopted as national history. Even our quality of being a nation has been based on everyone adopting these forced stories under the name of "common history." That is why those who voice the possibility of a different history are seen almost as having deviated from a national contract. Yet there is no truly commonly operating memory of this common history that builds the nation. What each person remembers about this common past is different.

Whichever end of our recent history we grab, it will remain in our hands. It was constructed so wrongly that it is not possible to recount the moment of its construction as it was and justify the founding will. Making it acceptable has been possible only by showing it as very different from what it was, to whatever extent it has been possible. That is why the past of a society governed from its very beginning with complete secrecy, mysticism and intrigue is, in one respect, a complete treasury of history. Every day we can receive lots of new, brand-new, fresh "breaking" "history news" to the effect that everything we took for truth is a lie and that many truths we should know have been hidden from us.

Every fresh piece of news we receive perhaps reinforces our divisions, but if a new and just contract about the present comes as a result, these divisions can after a point also turn into merely a beneficial richness of views. As this contract develops a society open in every respect, future generations will probably not feel the same interest in their own recent history, because they will not encounter a different piece of knowledge about something they know to the degree that would surprise or shock them.

That recent history is not as much a subject of interest in many societies today stems from the same cause. Because in societies governed with maximum transparency, where democratic participation and human rights have been conceded without complexes, there is no situation that would require recourse to the recent past.

CONDOLENCES: Hafız Mehmet Kara, who bore witness to the Republican era properly as a scholar, one of the religious scholars known in his circle as Kutuz Hoca, and the esteemed father of our valued thinkers Prof. Mustafa Kara, Prof. İsmail Kara and Hüseyin Kara, has passed to the mercy of the Truth (God). I wish him God's mercy and forgiveness, and his relatives condolences and beautiful patience.