Not polarization, but multipolar politics

That Prime Minister Erdoğan's remarks about student houses, made in the intra-party consultation setting in Kızılcahamam, have within a short time become the subject of a nationwide debate is, in one respect, a good thing. There is no more primary meaning to it than that all of the country's intellectuals and citizens take part in the internal debate of a ruling political party, and in my view this is an important indicator of the level of democracy in Turkey.

Because of this debate, there is nothing at all that would justify the anxiety of those who suddenly think that something is being imposed on them, let alone that an attack on lifestyles is coming. In the end, this subject is only being discussed, and everyone can contribute to this discussion with his own will and perspective.

Over the last 11 years, throughout the years the AK Parti has been in power, far from lifestyles being put under pressure, there has been a greater liberation of all lifestyles with each passing day. But to see this development more clearly, one needs an eye that can see lifestyles in all their plurality. Frankly, until now there was a single lifestyle imposed on all segments of society. In a way, all segments of society were treated equally on this point. But the irony contained in this equality was a painful irony. In a life where everyone is equal but some are a little more equal, the very diversification of lifestyles is characterized as a threat.

Starting from the problems in student dormitories or houses, we also hear, at the point reached, words that we should be glad about. It is suddenly said that, since the university student is of age, no authority can impose on him with whom, how and under what conditions he will stay. After such a long sentence, one cannot be sure what comes next, of course, but in principle, that an adult is responsible for his own actions, and that, especially as long as he does not aim to harm another in his private sphere, nobody can interfere with what he does, is a truth that cannot be objected to as a principle. Indeed, two fundamental subjects are intertwined here, and in both the measure is clear. The first is the individual freedom of the adult human being, and the second is the sanctity of privacy.

Regarding the first, when one sees that the great majority of those who say today that young people over 18 can do what they want as adult individuals come from those who have claimed that girls over 18 are not mature enough to cover their heads, one is inclined to rejoice in the name of a relative progress in favor of freedoms. But there are again more signs that this differentiation stems not from progress but simply from unprincipledness. Those who until yesterday could not accept that female students of university age were mature enough to decide to cover their heads can defend that the same girls are so free and responsible in living their sexuality that they cannot be placed under any restriction.

In fact, if only it ended there; a socialization environment in which one lifestyle is banned and the other encouraged to the fullest has virtually been made the norm of university life. Today that very lifestyle is exerting real pressure on the others like a norm. It is not possible to say that university students have equally accessible options in these normalized environments. An unwritten, factually operating cultural hegemony that is an industrial product has not even been properly criticized until now.

It is also a fact that the cultural environment created by this lifestyle exhibits a clear break from the general cultural and traditional environment of society. That this break would become the subject of some cultural tensions should also be expected. Indeed, the Prime Minister's aforementioned remarks are a response to complaints made to him by families whose own children study at university. As a conservative party, nothing else can be expected of the AK Parti in such a cultural-traditional tension.

As for the dimension of the matter relating to privacy. Here too it is possible to say that the existing legal limits and the limits of conservative identity overlap. That is, there is no situation that would justify the worries that were immediately blown up. The protection of privacy is one of the most important sensitivities of both conservatism and Muslimhood. Nobody should expect an intervention or development that would open the way to prying into what goes on within the privacy of homes. In Turkey the path toward that direction has been thoroughly closed, and the sanctity of privacy has become a stronger value. Moreover, this has developed as a natural consequence of all the democratic openings made.

That the debate on student dormitories has come to rest on a debate about lifestyle is not bad at all in this respect. On this occasion everyone has been made to pour out once again the stones in their skirts. Until yesterday only the hegemony of one lifestyle caused no debate. Today, as different lifestyles declare their existence, this gives the appearance of a conflict. Yet this appearance of conflict is precisely the expression of society's genuine pluralization, as a healthier course.

This is called polarization. This is the result of looking from a place accustomed to seeing Turkey as a single-party, unipolar structure. As Turkey normalizes, its political poles multiply too. What is described as polarization is in itself the most natural result of democracy, even of politics.