What Turkishness has suffered from cheap heroes

What I said about Turkishness in response to a question during my talk at Bayburt University continues to echo. It seems one does not get to decide for oneself which of one's words will be taken seriously, when and how. Had I known this beforehand, I would have focused my talk directly on concepts such as Turkishness, race, ethnicity, identity and nationalism, and announced the title of my lecture accordingly. Yet of a two-hour talk, only a 1.5-minute portion of a dialogue, which began in just ten minutes of it over a student's question unrelated to the subjects being discussed, has been reported in the news.

In fact, even in that portion I summarize most of what I wanted to say. Those who listen to those words sincerely will understand what I meant. Those who made the news report are not interested in my intention anyway, so they carry no concern about understanding me correctly. They pounce under the illusion that they have caught a fish, and the fish they could not find they in fact fabricate through their own counterfeiter's skill.

Although my intention was not to open a debate on Turkishness, race and identity, judging by the reaction produced by what was said when asked, the need to enter this subject has arisen. Admittedly, the reactions put forward are not open to meeting the evidence or arguments of a debate, or to producing counter-arguments. Had they been, of course, somebody would first have taken an interest in what I have written and said on this subject beyond my one-and-a-half-minute, even half-sentence, statement. Yet what I have written and said on race, identity, nation and Turkishness is beyond count.

For example, with these writings of mine, when I did a program for a full three years on Mehtap TV together with Ferhat Kentel, we discussed these subjects in detail and repeatedly, including the very same sentences, both between ourselves and with the guests we invited. So what I said during the period when I made programs evidently did not disturb the Camia. Fine, but what of the vanguard officiousness that the Camia media, with its television, its newspaper, its internet, its social media, displayed in distorting my words in the Bayburt talk, turning them into news and spreading it? Did they not know me during the three years they had me making programs, and have they now come to know me through that half-sentence? Where would this mad rage lead a person, a rage that has led them to disregard the ethics of news reporting so completely in this struggle they have evidently launched against the AK Parti? I can no longer believe that the sole reason for this is the matter of the prep schools. What ethics can accommodate distorting events, slandering, presenting what did not happen as having happened and what did happen as not having happened?

That aside. As expected, the heavyweights of the MHP, too, were not slow to enter the matter one by one with cheap displays of heroism, supposedly to protect Turkishness under attack. I wish the gentlemen would explain what they have added to the glory and honor of Turkishness or Turkey with their stance so far. Other than propagating the Turk to the Turk by bellowing, how have they been able to add any value to Turkishness? The most beneficial thing they could do is to try to learn, by looking a little at the experience of the AK Parti government, how value can be added to Turkishness and how Turkey regained its former glory and honor within ten years. What was the validity of the Turkish passport in the world during the period when the MHP was a partner in government, and what is it now? If you like, let us begin our course from there. By shouting at the top of your lungs like that, you merely cover up your own flaws, grown as big as mountains, toward Turkishness, dear Mr. Bahçeli.

The MHP's deputies of academic background have also set out to prove to me the existence of Turkishness through history and ethnography. The existence of the Turk is not a subject of debate, my clever friend. What is being mentioned and discussed there is whether Turkishness is a race or a nation. A nationalist in this position who cannot tell the two apart is the one who actually commits a scandal, because what I say is said precisely by many figures regarded as the theoreticians of Turkism, respected names among nationalists. Should one conclude from this that Devlet Bahçeli, Sinan Oğan and Yusuf Halaçoğlu have not read M. Bahattin Öğel, Faruk Sümer and Erol Güngör? If they read them, what they say against me amounts to a hypocritical fascistic populism (because these most respected thinkers of Turkish nationalism say that Turkishness is not a race); if they did not read them, that is a separate scandal in itself. They owe an explanation of how they look nationalists in the face.

By the way, a small reminder to the Flagship, which yesterday made my words a headline as if inviting a lynching, from the piece of February 23, 2007, by Ertuğrul Özkök, who was then editor-in-chief:

In front of me is a book published by Kabalcı Publishing.

Its title is "The History of the Turks." Its author is Jean-Paul Roux.

At its beginning there is a sentence that sounds very bold and striking:

"The Turks have no racial characteristics."

***

I am quoting that section from the book verbatim:

"Because the Turks have tended to marry outside, choosing their spouses from among non-Turks, have mixed with every tribe they happened upon, their language has had a very great power of attraction, and very many communities have adopted this language, it has become impossible to identify any physical characteristic that can be called characteristic of the Turks. We know that there is no pure race on earth. But on this subject we must go further and say that the Turks are not a pure race. The Turks have no racial characteristics. Therefore we cannot speak of a Turkish race in itself."

And right after it, another equally striking finding:

"In the veins of the Turks there flows more foreign, Mongol, Chinese, Iranian, Greek, Caucasian, Russian and African blood than the old Turkish blood, the blood that makes cheekbones prominent and eyes slanted."

Özkök relates all these quotations to prove that the Turks, even if they wished, could not be racists, but in the end he also adds this finding: "The Turk is not a race."

To whom, with whom, and for how much will you sell this cheap heroism?