The desire for a "saviour" that goes far beyond Ahbap

The feelings of humanitarian mutual aid, solidarity, and unity and togetherness that were set in motion by the Great Earthquake offered an epic spectacle that made our hopes bloom from within an unprecedented calamity and made us more optimistic about the future. In the first moments of the earthquake, of course, no one is in a state to calculate, advertise, or hurry to answer anyone. For everyone to do what they can is a moral obligation that no one who is human can avoid. The sum of the people who carry this obligation and fulfill it properly is a magnificent asset that has lifted this country from being a piece of land to the level of a homeland.

We have a quality as a nation for which we could never give enough thanks. Even the images that now and then appear and that could be a blot on this nation's face do not diminish these heroic deeds, this quality, in the slightest. Successive earthquakes affecting an unprecedented area at the same time, cold weather, snowstorms, and roads blocked because the transportation infrastructure was also affected prevented a struggle with the desired effectiveness in the first day or two. But even in those hours there were armies of humanitarian aid and rescue, from every part of Turkey, that had set out to reach the earthquake zone and were stuck on the road. There was never any indifference or unconcern toward the disaster.

A politician from Adıyaman, speaking merely to be in opposition, claims that Adıyaman was abandoned to its fate for the first two days. Yet only a sentence or two after his remarks, he himself recounts that, although he set out from the very first hour, he could reach his region only at the end of the second day. And even the scene he describes shows that a perfect response to the earthquake was, at that moment, of a scale that exceeded every human and state capacity. Indeed, faced with this scene, President Erdoğan said that they had not been able to make the desired response in Adıyaman and in many regions during the first two days, and asked forgiveness for it.

In this earthquake Turkey once again showed the unity of state and nation; it did not merely bring aid to the regions affected by the earthquake in a short time, it also integrated and fused these regions with the rest of society. While the state made itself seen and felt in the field with all its means, a complete civil society and an army of volunteers were also seen to be present.

Each of the hundreds of civil society organizations, whose names are known and announced, took its place in the field on its own scale, as an ant would carry its share. Of course, none of them saw itself as an alternative to the state. It occurred to none of them to say "there is no state in the field, we are here." Because, in the presence of the state, the presence of each of them truly remained small. This scene was decidedly very different from the scene in 1999.

But I think there was a problem for certain people. In the field there were predominantly religious, conservative circles, the volunteers of communities and orders whose images normally disturb them. This was so evident that certain people were disturbed by the cries of "Allahu Akbar" that rose after every rescue from under the rubble, and they did not hesitate to express their discomfort.

Being present in the field of humanitarian aid, making some contribution there, is in fact a tremendous moral obligation, an invitation. Even those who cannot be there perhaps answer the invitation there through their aid.

But the desire of certain people not to stand side by side with those bearded men, those communities, whose presence in the field is so conspicuous, not to be seen with them, not to work toward the same goal as them, is so pronounced. And the story that the state was present in the field far more than supposed, and that an incredible recovery service was being carried out successfully, is so disturbing. It does not fit at all the story that certain people want to write out of their own heads. That is why, from the start, certain people wanted to see other heroes who could make it possible to write the "there is no state in the field" story, heroes to be substituted for the state or for conservative NGOs. When they could not see them, they produced them.

Ahbap seemed suited to this story from the very first moment. But it seems that even Ahbap itself was unaware of this need. Haluk Levent himself said it repeatedly, after all: "How can you compare me, Ahbap, with AFAD! In particular, some accounts said 'there is no state, there is Ahbap' so that I would become a target, that I would be unable to work well with the state, and as a result that I would object. There is absolutely no such thing. We are nothing against the state. Our total number of staff is 30. AFAD is there with over a hundred thousand staff. When I went there, the ministers were there too, I saw them, I talked to them. Now am I to say I did not see them?"

In fact Ahbap, exactly as its chairman Levent has openly stated, is one of the hundreds of NGOs in the field. It is by no means the strongest. Let us leave aside comparing it with AFAD or the Red Crescent; it is hard to compare it even with associations such as IHH, the Beşir Association, the Diyanet Foundation, Türgev, the Anadolu Federation. Because all of these organizations, together with hundreds of others, are present throughout the field far more effectively, both with their search-and-rescue activities and with their aid capacities. Even so, what made Ahbap so popular among so many NGOs that are all more effective and larger?

Haluk Levent points to an operation carried out through him, citing concrete examples of the intervention of FETÖ accounts in this matter. But even if he had not pointed to it at all, it is not at all hard to guess that a certain segment going beyond even FETÖ, through a complex psychology that has come into play in this matter, is inclined to create Ahbap as a bigger and different actor than it is. From a certain point on, Ahbap ceased to be Ahbap. Certain people needed an all-purpose and useful instrument like Ahbap to make up for their absence from the field, to disguise their stinginess and miserliness, to avoid answering the invitation to humanity, to ease their consciences. All of these needs brought Ahbap to the fore, but not as an actor, only as an object.

Now look, if you like, at what and how the news about the tents Ahbap bought from a company affiliated with the Red Crescent serves. Our friend Ersin Çelik laid out all the dimensions of the matter very well in his article yesterday, but even in this affair it is perfectly clear whose desires Ahbap is answering.