Politics without people and the Prime Minister's discourse of guarantee

After the headscarf was freed in the Parliament by a de facto situation, without delay, while the iron is hot, the trousers issue is being settled too. In tomorrow's session the internal regulations are being changed with the votes of the AK Parti, the MHP and the BDP. That the CHP is not joining this change is of course again interesting. As though the CHP had shrunk from supporting a change that would officially free trousers lest it open the way to a regulation that would free the headscarf, and this nonsensical ban had thus continued to this day.

Now, although it is known to everyone that this is how it was, does it not come across as a bit odd that a CHP deputy exhibited a dramatic discourse of victimhood over trousers on precisely the day when the headscarved deputies entered the Parliament General Assembly with their headscarves? Nobody is defending the trousers ban. In fact there is no need for an internal regulations change either; had Ms. Şafak tried to enter the General Assembly in trousers, nobody expected anyone to stop her despite the explicit ban in the regulations. At least when it was Ms. Şafak concerned, the trousers ban was merely a provision that would remain a dead letter like the Hat Law. But from Ms. Şafak's grand speech on the trousers ban, we were suddenly subjected to a grand literature of oppression equated with the headscarf ban. One would think that, just like because of the headscarf ban, a whole lot of women deputies had been thrown out of the Parliament General Assembly, that because of this ban hundreds of thousands of women had been excluded from education and working life, and that because they could not wear trousers women had been subjected to great discrimination. Against all the victimhood and pain produced by the headscarf ban, that such a speech was made precisely on a day when a meaningful step was taken against the headscarf ban went on record as, in fact, a great disrespect toward those pains and that victimhood.

Let us recall once again that although the trousers ban existed in the regulations in letter, there was not the slightest resistance to the lifting of this ban, and consequently there was not a single record of anyone's victimhood. By contrast, although the headscarf ban did not exist as a written provision, it was being sustained by creating a de facto situation. The fact that this ban could be enforced until now was always made possible by the possibility of the CHP's showing an unruly and loudmouthed resistance on this matter, which was feared. Had the CHP declared from the start that it would not make an issue of this, it would in a sense have been left with magnanimity, and the non-existent headscarf ban would have been lifted by the CHP itself. Yet the CHP considered even this political foresight too much for itself. When it understood that it could not defend the ban, it had in a sense to surrender to the de facto situation.

The de facto situation has always been valid as a way of granting or usurping rights. For Kurdish broadcasting or education too, progress could be achieved by creating de facto situations without resorting to legal changes. These de facto situations are made possible, to a degree, thanks to the risks that political actors take with their positive or negative attitudes.

Ahmet İnsel, these days, is deriving the most outlandish meanings from Prime Minister Erdoğan's remark "We are the guarantee of lifestyles!" He strangely finds Erdoğan's presenting himself as the guarantee of human rights or lifestyles dangerous, because according to him the guarantee of lifestyles or of rights and freedoms can be not a person or group but the regime.

This emphasis of İnsel's at first glance exposes an important problem regarding the definition or horizon of the political. I think İnsel is surrendering to an understanding that sees politics as a job done without people. It is perhaps not this simple, but perhaps when the subject is the AK Parti and Erdoğan, İnsel begins to pin his hopes on such an understanding of politics. Perhaps the possibility of a politics without people also opens a door to a politics without Erdoğan, who knows?

Yet have we not repeatedly experienced in Turkey that rights could be pushed back by the oligarchic tutelage of a party or a stratum, even by forcing the limits of the regime? Moreover, was it the political stance displayed by Erdoğan and the AK Parti cadres that pushed back the same arbitrary practices, or again a self-operating system? By which written rule of the regime could the headscarf ban be imposed on the entire society for so many years? Was the stance that Erdoğan and his friends put forward on April 28 against the customary General Staff statement of April 27, 2007, a customary stance? Is there no politics at all in this business? If there is a system in Europe today that works, for better or worse, does it work only through regimes without people?

If the CHP, without any legal basis, has until now been able to be the guarantee of an absurdity like the headscarf ban in a Muslim country such as Turkey, why should it be something to find strange that the Prime Minister, on the contrary, is the guarantee of rights and freedoms? Unfortunately, however far rights are advanced, or under the guarantee of whatever solid regime they are placed, the possibility of their being pushed back and of our suddenly being caught in a fascistic spiral cannot be entirely ruled out. The simple reason for this is that the human element can never be separated from politics. There is no politics that can sideline the human being by tying all functions to a system or a regime.

That is why it is truly a great achievement to be able to see evil even in a political leader's, let alone a prime minister's, presenting himself as the guarantee of every positive value, of freedoms, of lifestyles. But there is nothing to be seen in this achievement other than the symptoms of the disease of malice that has been caught. Yet in the Prime Minister's stance of being a guarantee there is a will of goodwill and a declaration committing to stand beside whatever is good. Whether it is accepted or not, most of the progress made today in the field of democracy and human rights is the work of this guarantor approach of his.