A revolution against the people?

Those who attribute a romantic and metaphysical beauty to Gezi are not open to any questioning of these protests. By attributing excessive meaning to Gezi, they dismiss as exceptions or "isolated" incidents, not representative of Gezi, all the behavior that even they cannot square with it. Yet even by the standard of whatever meaning anyone attributes to Gezi, the behaviors treated as exceptions (swearing, vandalism, violence, fascism, discrimination, Islamophobia, etc.) constitute the main vein of Gezi, and they are not even aware of it. This in fact calls for a completely different analysis of the Gezi experience.

People with very different political and ideological tendencies have created a utopian imaginary called Gezi; with its attributed features, far removed from reality, Gezi has become a phenomenon that has gone to people's heads. It was lived as an interesting experience in which everyone looked for their own loss, tried to meet their own expectations, saw what they wanted to see and sought to make up for what they lacked. We will probably hear very different things in the future about this experience that lasted about 15 days, and perhaps some will say "I was there too" and rewrite the history of Gezi, which was perceived in a thousand different ways even as it was being lived.

Who took part in Gezi with what intention, what purpose, what motivation: beyond a certain point, evaluating this is left to literary embellishment. Was it an innocent action at first and did it spoil later, could all the participants have been ill-intentioned, were there planners behind it: these are, in fact, absurd questions from beginning to end. There is nowhere to get by pursuing these questions; they are questions that consume intelligence and squander the mind. By pursuing such questions, we find ourselves forced to take seriously that there is a contradiction between the sociology of the matter and pointing to its planners or directors.

The Gezi incident is an important incident; it has given us the chance to see a great many strong and weak sides, different tendencies and reflexes, changing and unchanging aspects of the society we live in, which we could not see under normal conditions. When we speak of the unchanging aspects, it is not necessary to say that nothing in society has changed. Nor does speaking of the changing aspects mean that all the realities of Turkey and the world have been reformatted. After all, we have a socio-political tradition full of coups, and we have not extricated ourselves from this tradition. The street incidents, the images of violence, and the organizations showing up with their flags and banners that we experienced with the Gezi events are by no means actors of a new politics belonging to the postmodern world, come from another realm. From whichever angle you look, they are actors belonging to the mentality of the Cold War years, emerged from its black-and-white world. We have watched, time and again, these same actors playing a role written for them at some point in dozens of coups or coup attempts that took place before. We have no need to watch again in order to understand what this film, which we have watched over and over, is.

Yet dear Mustafa Akyol and those who see this event as one that developed spontaneously act as if they have always missed some part of this film they have watched so many times. Somehow their situation resembles that of Temel in the joke. Temel, who went to see a film buying a ticket 20 times, caught the attention of the ticket clerk, who asked, "What did you find in this film that requires watching it 20 times?" Temel says, "At one point in the film the woman is just turning her face, and just as I'm about to see it, a train suddenly passes. Every time I go in thinking I'll catch it this time, but the same thing always happens."

To see that there is a will for a coup, for an operation, in the Gezi events as a whole, we do not need to watch this film 20 more times. This film has already been shown to us 20 times; the same thing always happens. Of course, at some point in all the previous operations there were also script lines or arrangements, such as those of friends like Akyol, that gave the impression that the event was unfolding spontaneously, just as in the earlier ones.

In all previous coup attempts, did we not see that the student incidents and social demonstrations that were made to seem as if they had developed spontaneously were all pre-arranged, managed and directed movements? Go, if you like, to the Ali Kalkancıs, the Müslüm Gündüzs and the Aczmendis of February 28; or to the Deniz Gezmişes of before March 12; or to the Kahramanmaraş, Çorum and Sivas incidents of before September 12. Those events too were presented, while they were taking place, as the ordinary movements or reactions of the people, because otherwise they could not have been effective anyway. A provocation cannot be effective once it is known to be a provocation.

Meanwhile, the leftist circles who want to see a Revolution in Gezi have been badly offended by my article on "chasing after every wink as a revolution." As someone who called what happened in Egypt a revolution from the start, they have even pinned the title "pro-government revolutionary" on me for belittling the revolution in Turkey.

The comparison between Taksim and Tahrir has resembled, from the start, the relationship between a chicken and a millet granary. That is why it is not to be taken seriously. But seeing so many people full of longing for a millet granary, one cannot help but remind them:

The revolution in Turkey has been happening since 2002, with the participation of the people. The commotions we are experiencing now are at most a counter-revolution attempt, like that of the axe-wielding thugs in Egypt, against this revolution. Moreover, this analogy is not mine; it belongs to an Egyptian Tahrir revolutionary. When he looked at the stirrings in Turkey, as far as he knew, Erdoğan too made this analogy instantly. Because this is one of the counter-revolution moves, attempted many times since 2002, against a people that has already made, or is in the process of making, a revolution.